Raoul Dautry

After graduating from the École Polytechnique in 1900, he began a career with the railway company, Chemin de Fer du Nord.

In 1914, during World War I, he set up a railway routing system which enabled reinforcements to be transferred to the front for the Battle of the Marne.

During the German occupation of France, he withdrew from political life and retired to his home in Lourmarin in the department of Vaucluse.

After the liberation, he was appointed Minister of Reconstruction and Urban Development by General Charles de Gaulle, a post which he held from 16 November 1944 to 20 January 1946.

Thereafter he became general director of the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (French Atomic Energy Commission).