Paul Ruff

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Paul Ruff (7 January 1913 - 16 October 2000) was a French trade unionist, mathematician and resistance fighter.

Life[]

Family background[]

After France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Ruff's paternal grandparents Michel Ruff and Buna Dreyfus left Alsace-Moselle for Algiers, where Michel set up a bookshop,^[1] known as a meeting place for cultural groups until 1912, and Buna headed a girls' school.^[2] The couple had several children, including the eldest (who broke with the family), Paul-Charles Ruff (better known as ) and the third child Maurice (who became a cultural inspector for the general government of Algeria^[3]).

Maurice married Reine Sultana Amar^[4] and Paul was the eldest of their two children. He was born in Sidi Bel-Abbès and grew up in the cultured Jewish society of Algiers, attending the boys' lycée there before attending the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and École Normale Supérieure, both in Paris, being admitted to the latter in 1934. He was called up as a sub-lietutenant in a DCA battery.^[5] His unit withdrew in good order during the Fall of France in 1940, after shooting down the first German planes of the campaign. During his journey out of France he met and married the young Anna Berensztein, though their first child did not survive the journey. The couple retired to Algiers, where Ruff's parents still lived and from which he later hoped to return to rejoin the Free French forces.

Resistance work[]

Maths professor[]

Trade unionist[]

Political engagement[]

References[]