1839 in France

Incumbents

• Monarch - Louis Philippe I

Events

• 9 January – The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.
• 2 March – Legislative election held.
• 12–13 May – Failed insurrection led by Louis Auguste Blanqui, Armand Barbès, Martin Bernard, and the Société des Saisons as part of the struggle for French worker's rights.
• 22 June – Louis Daguerre receives patent for his camera.
• 6 July – Legislative election held.
• 19 August – French government gives Louis Daguerre a pension and gives the daguerreotype "for the whole world".
• 15 October – Emir Abdelkader of Algeria declares a jihad against the French.

Births

• 19 January – Paul Cézanne, painter
• 27 January – Marie Adolphe Carnot, chemist, mining engineer and politician
• 16 March – Sully Prudhomme, poet and essayist, winner of first Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901
• 17 March – Louis Ricard, lawyer and politician
• 5 May – Louis Émile Javal, ophthalmologist
• 21 May – Joseph Albert Alexandre Glatigny, poet
• 9 August – Gaston Paris, writer and scholar
• 20 August – Gaston du Bousquet, steam locomotive engineer
• 9 October – Georges Leclanché, electrical engineer

Full date unknown

• Eugène Petit, flower painter and textile designer
• Albert Tissandier, architect, aviator, illustrator, editor and archaeologist

Deaths

• 10 January – Charles Philippe Lafont, violinist and composer
• 2 March – Charlotte Napoléone Bonaparte, niece of Napoleon I
• 18 March – Victoire Babois, poet and writer of elegies
• 2 April – Toussaint-Bernard Éméric-David, archaeologist and writer on art
• 9 May – Joseph Fiévée, journalist, novelist, essayist and playwright
• 13 May – Hugues-Bernard Maret, duc de Bassano, statesman and journalist
• 19 July – Maurice de Guérin, poet
• 30 September – Joseph François Michaud, historian and publicist
• 26 December – Laurent Jean François Truguet, admiral
• 31 December – Hyacinthe-Louis de Quelen, Archbishop of Paris