French aeronaut, historian and collector (Paris, 1893 – Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1981). A free-balloon and airship pilot who kept making ascents until 1978, he devoted his entire life to aeronautics. Put in charge of the Conservatoire de l'aéronautique's collections in 1919, he founded and ran the Musée de l'Air at Meudon from 1927 to 1958, assembling one of the world's foremost aeronautical collections. A specialist in the origins of flight, he had co-written with Henri Bouché the Histoire de l'aéronautique (1932), of which L'Homme, l'air et l'espace is the successor; here he wrote the opening part, "Les Origines," covering Antiquity to 1914.