Marie-Louise Paris

Marie-Louise Paris (20 October 1889–28 April 1969), known as Mademoiselle Paris was a French engineer who founded the l'Institut électro-mécanique féminin (the Women's Electro-mechanical Institute) in 1925, which became the l'École polytechnique féminine (Women's Polytechnic) and is now the EPF School of Engineering.

Marie-Louise Paris was born in Besançon in 20 October 1889 as the oldest of a family of 6 children. Although her father died while she was young she managed to complete a bachelor's degree in science at the Sorbonne in Paris. She followed her sister Hélène there and graduated as an engineer in 1921 from the School of Mechanics and Electricity. They both then graduated in 1922 from the Grenoble Institute of Technology under the supervision of Louis Barbillion.^[1][2][3][4]

Hélène Paris married and remained in Grenoble but Marie-Louise Paris returned to the city of Paris where she spent time working on the installation of the signaling service for Laon station. Paris associated with people from the colleges, engineers and scientists such as Gabriel Koenigs, the professor at the faculty of sciences in Paris, Paul Langevin, the director of the l'École centrale, Léon Guillet, Léon Eyrolles, director of the School of Public Works, Paul Appell, rector of the l'Académie de Paris, and Edouard Branly. With their association and support, Marie-Louise Paris was able to legitimise the creation of a tertiary level college reserved for women.^[1][2][3][4]

Based on her own experiences in Grenoble, where there were only 4 women in a class of 605 students, Paris set about developing a college for women. In 1925, she arranged for the use of the amphitheater of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) to be used to house the l'Institut électro-mécanique féminin (Women's Electro-Mechanical Institute). The institute opened to students on 4 November 1925. Initially, Paris and two teachers provided all the teaching in the school. Gabriel Koenigs taught technical drawing and mechanics. Marie-Louise Paris was invited to the 7th Congress of Industrial Chemistry to discuss women's access to industrial careers as a result of her innovations.

In 1933 Paris changed the name of the school to the École polytechnique féminine (Women's Polytechnic College) and the length of the course was extended from 2 to 3 years. In the following years, the school left the CNAM and was based in the lycees of La Fontaine, Jules-Ferry and Janson de Sailly until 1956 when Paris bought a building for the school in Sceaux. Paris designated pilots Hélène Boucher and Maryse Bastié as patrons of the school and later pilot and aircraft designer Henri Farman became a sponsor.^{[5][1][2][6][3][4][7][8][9][10]}

Paris learned to fly in a Caudron at Guyancourt aerodrome. She designed a prototype private plane which she displayed at an aviation show in 1936. She died at school on 28 April 1969 of diabetes.^[1]

One of the buildings of the EPF School of Engineering bears her name and there is a statue of her on the school campus. In Grenoble there is a tram station which was renamed Marie-Louise Paris on 2 September 2019.^[11][8][9]