Jacques Chirac

French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007, elected in 1995 and again in 2002. Chirac was previously the Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988, as well as the Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995. His long political career included service from the municipal to the national level in elected positions as well as political appointments.

Chirac was the only child of an aircraft company executive and a homemaker. He spent his Summers in the serene southwestern area of France visiting relatives. After working on a cargo ship for a Summer, he earned his degree in political science at the prestigious Institut d'Éudes Politiques.

In 1953, at age 20, he won a scholarship to study at Harvard for the Summer, working part time in a sandwich shop. He read history and poetry, and was fascinated by Chinese and Japanese civilizations. Though he had already met his future wife, Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, he had a romance with an heiress from South Carolina. She called him "honey child," and chauffeured him in a white Cadillac. Chirac returned to Paris to marry Bernadette on 16 March 1956. Until his death, she was his biggest supporter.

After serving in the French army in 1956, he attended L’École Nationale d'Administration, the training ground for the elite of France's civil servants. Thin, nervous and fast-talking, his political career was launched in 1962 when he landed a position in the office of Georges Pompidou, then Charles de Gaulle’s Prime Minister.

In 1967, he was elected to the national assembly and, a year later, was appointed to the Ministry of Economics and Finance. In 1972, he was named to the post of Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and in 1974 he became Minister of the Interior. Soon after, his patron Georges Pompidou died and Chirac was named Prime Minister by the new President, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.