Edgar Faure

Edgar Faure
Edgar Faure at the Geneva Summit (1955)
President of French National Assembly
In office 2 April 1973 – 2 April 1978
Preceded by	Achille Peretti
Succeeded by	Jacques Chaban-Delmas
89th Prime Minister of France
In office 20 January 1952 – 8 March 1952
President	Vincent Auriol
Preceded by	René Pleven
Succeeded by	Antoine Pinay
In office 23 February 1955 – 1 February 1956
President	René Coty
Preceded by	Pierre Mendès-France
Succeeded by	Guy Mollet
Personal details
Born	18 August 1908 Béziers
Died	30 March 1988(1988-03-30) (aged 79) Paris
Political party	Radical

Edgar Faure (French: [ɛdɡaʁ foʁ]; 18 August 1908 – 30 March 1988) was a French politician, essayist, historian, and memoirist.

Faure was born in Béziers, Languedoc-Roussillon, to a French army doctor. He was nearsighted yet a brilliant student since young age, earning a bachelor's degree at 15, and a law degree at 19 in Paris. At 21 years of age he became a member of the bar association, the youngest lawyer in France to do so at the time. While living in Paris, he became active in Third Republic politics, and he joined the Radical Party.

During the German occupation of World War II, he joined the French Resistance in the Maquis, and in 1942, he fled to Charles de Gaulle's headquarters in Algiers, where he was made head of the Provisional Government of the Republic's legislative department. At the end of the war, he served as French counsel for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials.

In 1946, he was elected to the French Parliament as a Radical. While the popularity of his party declined to less than 10% of the total vote, none of the other parties was able to gain a clear majority. Therefore, early on, his party often played a disproportionately important role in the formation of French governments, and he even led the cabinet in 1952 and from 1955 to 1956. Faure was a leader of the more conservative wing of the party, opposing the party's left, under Pierre Mendès-France.