1902 in France

Incumbents

• President: Émile Loubet
• President of the Council of Ministers: Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, Emile Combes

Events

• January - Alfred Loisy writes L'évangile et l'Eglise, which inaugurates the crisis of modernism in the Catholic Church.
• 13 April – A new land speed record of is set in Nice by Leon Serpollet driving a steam car.
• 27 April – Legislative Election held.
• 8 May – 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on Martinique.
• 11 May – Legislative Election held.
• 24 August – A statue of Joan of Arc is unveiled in Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, the town which she stormed in 1429.
• 1 September – The first science fiction film, the trick film A Trip to the Moon, is premièred at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris by actor/producer Georges Méliès, and proves an immediate success.
• 5 October – Thousands attend the funeral of the novelist Émile Zola at the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris. They include Alfred Dreyfus, given special permission by Mme Zola to attend.
• The capital of French Indochina is moved from Saigon to Hanoi.
• Claude Monet begins his Water Lilies series of paintings in his garden at Giverny.

Literature

• André Gide - L'Immoraliste
• Jules Verne - ''Les Frères Kip''

Music

• Claude Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande
• Jules Massenet - Le jongleur de Notre-Dame
• Maurice Ravel - Jeux d'eau
• Camille Saint-Saëns - Cello Concerto No. 2
• Erik Satie
• * Poudre d'or
• * Tendrement

Births

January–June

• 11 January – Maurice Duruflé, composer and organist
• 13 January – Raymond Ruyer, philosopher
• 18 January – Émile Aillaud, architect
• 21 January – Agnès Souret, model, "la plus belle femme de France"
• 25 January – André Beaufre, colonel
• 29 January – Arlette Marchal, actress
• 8 February – André Gillois, writer and radio pioneer
• 26 February – Jean Bruller, writer and illustrator
• 9 March – Elisabeth de Rothschild, World War II heroine
• 13 March – Louis Ducatel, politician and businessman
• 14 March – Henri Barbé, communist
• 16 March – Louis Couffignal, mathematician and cybernetics pioneer
• 22 March – Madeleine Milhaud, actress
• 29 March – Marcel Aymé, novelist and children's writer
• 4 April – Louise Leveque de Vilmorin, novelist, poet and journalist
• 9 April – Théodore Monod, naturalist, explorer and humanist scholar
• 3 May – Alfred Kastler, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 7 May – Jean-Philippe Lauer, architect and Egyptologist
• 8 May – André Michel Lwoff, microbiologist, awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1965
• 27 May – Émile Benveniste, structural linguist
• 2 June – Georges Coudray, politician
• 15 June – Pierre Béarn, writer
• 28 June – Pierre Brunet, figure skater

July–December

• 6 July – Louis Vola, double bass player
• 16 July – Vincent Badie, lawyer and politician
• 21 July – Georges Wambst, Olympic cyclist
• 9 August – Zino Francescatti, violinist
• 11 August – Christian de Castries, military officer
• 16 August – Gilbert Gérintès, rugby union player
• 24 August – Fernand Braudel, historian
• 28 August – Jean Favard, mathematician
• 15 October – André Prudhommeaux, anarchist bookstore owner
• 20 October – René Floriot, lawyer.
• 31 October – Marie-Laure de Noailles, patron of the arts
• 4 November – Pierre Edouard Leopold Verger, photographer and ethnographer
• 16 November – Paul Bontemps, athlete and Olympic medallist
• 20 November – Jean Painlevé, film director
• 25 December – Maurice Gallay, footballer
• 31 December – Marcel Bidot, cyclist

Full date unknown

• Jules Semler-Collery, composer, conductor and teacher

Deaths

• 26 January- Noël Ballay, explorer, colonial administrator and poet
• 6 February – Clémence Royer, scholar
• 17 February – Marie-Louise Gagneur, feminist
• 12 April – Marie Alfred Cornu, physicist
• 15 April – Jules Dalou, sculptor
• 4 July – Hervé Faye, astronomer
• 8 August – James Tissot, painter
• 29 September – Émile Zola, writer
• 7 December – Pierre Paul Dehérain, chemist and botanist
• Full date unknown – Alexandre Bertrand, archaeologist