Alexandre Ananoff (born in Tbilisi on 7 April 1910, died in Paris on 25 December 1992) was a French science populariser and art historian of Georgian origin. He arrived in France in 1921 and remained entirely self-taught. A childhood astronomy enthusiast, he discovered astronautics in 1927 at the library of the Société astronomique de France through Tsiolkovsky's writings, and corresponded with the Russian scientist until the latter's death in 1935. A tireless lecturer from 1929 onward, he published his first work on the subject, "La navigation interplanétaire", in 1935. Author of the landmark treatise "L'Astronautique" (Fayard, 1950), which inspired Hergé's "Destination Moon" and "Explorers on the Moon", he organised the first International Astronautical Congress in Paris in 1950. From the 1960s on, he became an internationally recognised expert on eighteenth-century French painting (Boucher, Fragonard).