Supaero - Famous Alumni

Famous Alumni

During the 5 years preceding the first world war, SUPAERO produced 303 qualified engineers, 52 of which were foreigners. Among them are found some great names in aeronautics:

• Raoul Badin (class of 1910), one of the main inventors of the airspeed indicator and forefather of instrument flying.
• Henri Coandă (class of 1910), discovered the Coandă Effect.
• Henry Potez (class of 1911), founder of the Potez airplanes company,
• Mikhail Gurevich (class of 1913), founder of MiG aircraft.
• Marcel Bloch-Dassault (class of 1913), founder of the Dassault airplanes company,
• André Couzinet (class of 1925), who conceived the Arc-en-Ciel (the mythical plane flown by Jean Mermoz), and also invented the retractable landing gear and the modern yoke.
• Henri Ziegler (class of 1931) father of the Airbus program,
• Guy du Merle (class of 1932), first director-general of the École nationale de l'aviation civile (French civil aviation university),
• François Hussenot (class of 1935), inventor of the "hussenographe" (an early form of Flight data recorder or "black box"); also involved in the creation of EPNER.
• Serge Dassault (class of 1951), CEO of Dassault Aviation,
• Jean Bastien-Thiry (class of 1952), famous for his assassination attempt on French president Charles de Gaulle in 1962,
• Frédéric d'Allest (class of 1966) first chairman of Arianespace,
• Jean-François Clervoy (class of 1983), astronaut.
• Thomas Pesquet (class of 2001), astronaut.