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.