Louis Armand

Louis Armand (17 January 1905 – 30 August 1971) was a French engineer who managed several public companies, and had a significant role during World War II as an officer in the Resistance. He was the first chair of Euratom and was elected to the Académie française in 1963.

For the writer and critical theorist, see Louis Armand (writer).

Louis Armand
Born(1905-01-17)17 January 1905
Cruseilles, Haute-Savoie, France
Died30 August 1971(1971-08-30) (aged 66)
Villers-sur-Mer, France
OccupationEngineer
Known forInventor, administrator, resistance fighter
Spouse(s)Genevieve Gazel

Biography

Early years

Louis Armand was born in Cruseilles, Haute-Savoie, and studied in Annecy and in Lyon at the Lycée du Parc. He graduated second in his class from the École Polytechnique (class of 1924), then joined the Corps des Mines and was major from École des Mines.[1] He married his wife, Genevieve Gazel, in 1928.

Career

He joined the Compagnie du chemin de fer Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (PLM) in 1934, transferring to the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF) when the PLM was nationalised in 1938. In 1940–1941 he invented a method for preventing the calcification, furring up, of engine boilers called the Traitement Integral Armand (TIA) water treatment process for steam locomotives.[2]

During the Second World War he organized and led the Resistance group named Résistance-Fer, from February 1943 onwards. He was arrested by the Gestapo on 25 June 1944. He was liberated from jail during the liberation of Paris, and was decorated with the Croix de la Liberation.

In 1949, Armand was named the general manager of the SNCF and created the Société du tunnel sous la Manche in 1957. During this time, he pushed for the electrification of the rail system using AC voltage.

From 1958 to 1959, he managed the European atomic energy commission (Euratom), having inspired its creation.[1]

In the late 1960s, after May 1968 in Paris, Louis Armand was instrumental in helping Christian LeClercq and the Junior Chamber of Commerce of Brussels to start a new European thinktank and membership organization: "L'Entreprise de Demain - Forum for Tomorrow".

This non-profit and non political organization was soon going to leave the Junior Chamber of Commerce to become independent. To help that organization, Louis Armand, as a visionary global thinker, provided access to some of the best "global leaders" in international business, world politics, academia and scientific research who addressed the Forum, under the royal guidance of Baudouin I of Belgium.

"L'Entreprise de Demain - Forum for Tomorrow" soon developed chapters in Denmark, France, Switzerland and the United States, allowing some of the most brilliant minds of the time to address corporate executives and share their views about the future of the world.

Louis Armand wrote a book on "l'Entreprise de Demain" in 1970, and the history of the organization was also published in the "Que Sais-Je?" collection.

In 1971, Louis Armand successfully pushed to have the word "creativity" included in the French dictionary.[1]

Armand died in Villers-sur-Mer, at 66.

Without the visionary inspiration and guidance of Louis Armand, "L'Entreprise de Demain - Forum for Tomorrow" could never have been formed. The worldwide organization lasted for well over 20 years. Its founder and international president, Christian LeClercq, died in July 2011.

Bibliography
  • 1961 : Plaidoyer pour l’avenir
  • 1965 : De la Savoie au Val d’Aoste par le tunnel du Mont-Blanc
  • 1968 : Simples propos
  • 1968 : Le pari européen (with Michel Drancourt)
  • 1969 : Propos ferroviaires
  • 1970 : De la cybernétique à l’intéressement
  • 1970 : L’Entreprise de demain
  • 1974 : Message pour ma patrie professionnelle
gollark: Come to think of it, I *could* use postgres instead of nginx for this.
gollark: Imagine the potential for analysis of osmarks.tk trends.
gollark: Anyway, instead of logging *directly* to a database somehow, I'd just have nginx output JSON logs, which I could then feed into a program to periodically parse that, dump it in a database, delete the log file, and have nginx reopen the logfile.
gollark: Vaguely.
gollark: Wow, my logfile's 78MB.

References
  1. "SNCF History – Louis Armand". Archived from the original on 15 May 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2008.
  2. Direct Chemical Treatment of Boiler Water Compared to Lineside Treatment Archived 7 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  • Buzaré, Josette (2000). Louis Armand, le savoyard du siècle. Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, France: Éd. La Salévienne.
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