Marcelle Lafont
Marcelle Lafont (23 November 1905 - 8 October 1982) was a chemist, chemical engineer, member of the French Resistance and later a politician. Born into the successful bourgeois Lafont family (owners of the Adolphe Lafont company) she broke with tradition and earned a degree in chemical engineering, became a truck driver, an aviator and spoke several languages. In 1935 she ran for election in Villeurbanne when women still did not have the right to vote in France. During the Second World War, her work in the French Resistance earned her the Resistance Medal. She later took up politics in Songieu. Marcelle Lafont was born in the 3rd arrondissement of Lyon on 23 November 1905, the only daughter of Pauline (née Falb) and Adolphe Lafont. Her father was an industrialist and founder of the company Adolphe Lafont, the first inventors of salopettes. Her mother used the family fortune and connections in her philanthropic work. The young Marcelle often accompanied her father to the factory, and learned how the industrial and technical world worked in the workshops. As an only child, Marcelle Lafont was brought up to be her father's successor, encouraged to pursue a rigorous education, not usual at the time for a young girl who was part of the Lyonnaise bourgeoisie. Her mother Pauline Lafont was well educated, having graduated from the lycée Edgar Quinet, and was involved in running the family business. From 1921 - 1925, Madame Lafont oversaw the development of the now listed Art Deco family home, Villa Lafont aka Villa La Ferrandière, near the family factory. She commissioned interiors inspired by those discovered at Pompei, seen on a family visit there. The house was designed by the Bureau Technique de Construction led by engineers Léon Lelièvre (1878-1938) and Léon Barbier (1849-1930) and incorporated cutting-edge technologies in a house. It was connected to the factory by an electrical circuit, a water supply and an underground passage.Marcelle Lafont passed her Baccalauréat in elementary mathematics and earning a licence ès sciences, a higher level secondary education qualification.
