Lionel Laming was a French engineer, holding a science degree (« licence ès sciences ») and a graduate of the École nationale supérieure du pétrole et des moteurs (E.N.S.P.M.). He is the author of several technical popularising volumes published by the Presses universitaires de France from the late 1940s onwards. His « L'Astronautique » (« Que sais-je ? » No. 397, first published in 1949) is one of the earliest French manuals on spaceflight in a mainstream popular-science series; it was thoroughly revised on several occasions, culminating in a fully recast third edition in 1971. Detailed biographical information (dates and place of birth, professional trajectory) remains scarce in publicly available sources.