Maurice Françon (15 June 1913 – 11 August 1996) was a French engineer, physicist and academic.

[1] His father was related to the Edouard Herriot's family and worked as a chemical engineer at the Physical Research Laboratory of the Sorbonne managed by Gabriel Lippmann.

During World War II, he was sent to Dunkerque in the North of France and escaped to England on a civilian ship on June 2nd, 1940.

After the Nazi invasion in the Zone libre, Françon returned to Paris on Boulevard Pasteur and began to write his thesis titled Vision in an instrument tainted with spherical aberration (in french: Vision dans un instrument entaché d'aberration sphérique)[2] under the supervision of Pierre Fleury.

He became head of the Science faculty and in charge of practical work at the Institut d'optique Graduate School with André Maréchal.