The vast majority of chief executives of big firms hail from one of a handful of grandes écoles, such as école Polytechnique, an elite science school.

He was a conscientious, if not particularly likeable, army officer, and a graduate of Polytechnique, the highly competitive French engineering school.

Researchers at Corning and Polytechnique Montreal discovered that they couldmake very high quality waveguides, which confine and direct light, in GorillaGlass.