Former names

The School will soon be reaching its centenary and counts among its alumni some of the greatest names in aeronautics and space including brilliant inventors, visionaries and great industrialists.

Since it was first created, the School has seen more than 12,000 graduates pass out with among them the inventor of the instrument capable of measuring an aircraft’s speed, the inventor of the first jet engine, the inventor of the “black box”, of the Potez-Bloch propeller that equipped most allied aircraft after 1917, the father of the Caravelle, the man who initiated the Airbus project, the founder of Dassault Aviation, the inventor of the modern joystick and retractable landing gear, CATIA software, and so on.    

Famous names from “Supaero”

• Raoul Badin, 1910 year, initiator of flying in zero visibility
• Henri Coanda, 1910 year, creator of the air turbine
• Henry Potez, 1911 year, inventor of the propeller bearing his name
• Marcel Bloch-Dassault, 1913 year, founder of Dassault Aviation (see above)
• Andre Couzinet, 1925 year, creator of the “Arc-en-Ciel" (or Rainbow), the mythical plane of the great French aviator Mermoz. He also invented the joystick and the retractable landing gear
• Henri Ziegler, 1931 year, responsible for creating Airbus
• François Hussenot, 1935 year, inventor of what was named the “hussonograph”, now known as the “black box”, though orange in colour
• Jean Pinet, 1946 year, former Concorde test pilot and founder of Aeroformation
• Serge Dassault, 1951 year, son of Marcel Dassault and Chairman and Managing Director of Dassault Aviation
• Fréderic d’Allest, 1966 year, former General Manager of CNES and first President of Arianespace
• Alexis Kniazeff, 1966 year, President and founder of Altran Technologies
• Jean Laurent, 1967 year, President of Crédit Agricole and Crédit Lyonnais
• Charles Champion, 1978 year, Executive Vice-President of the A380 program
• Jean-François Clervoy, 1983 year, astronaut