Georges Pompidou

Georges Pompidou was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1962 to 1968 under President Charles de Gaulle, with whom he was closely associated throughout his career, and then as President of France from 1969 until his death in 1974. During a period of strong growth at the end of the Trente Glorieuses he continued de Gaulle's policy of modernisation, symbolised by presidential use of the Concorde, the creation of large industrial groups and the launch of the high-speed train project that became the TGV. His government invested heavily in the automobile, agribusiness, steel, telecommunications, nuclear and aerospace sectors and created the minimum wage known as the SMIC and the Ministry of the Environment. His foreign policy was pragmatic yet in line with the Gaullist principle of French autonomy within the Western Bloc, warming relations with the United States of Richard Nixon, keeping close relations with the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev and relaunching European construction by easing British entry to the EEC. He died in office in 1974 of Waldenstrom's disease. The Centre Pompidou, which he initiated, was inaugurated in 1977.