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Léonard Bordas, also known as Professor Bordas, was born in 1864 in Égletons, Corrèze, in the New Aquitaine region of southwestern France, to a father who worked as a sawyer.

He was a French naturalist, entomologist, and educator. He excelled in his studies of natural sciences and graduated in natural history. Bordas taught at the University of Rennes, where he later served as the dean and then the rector of his faculty. Upon his death, he left a substantial collection of insects and scientific reports to the Albert Thomas College in Égletons.

Born in Vicenza, Italy, Gino Borodin became a master of the steel guitar, soon after moving to Paris in 1926. He has been called “the Parisian wizard of the Hawaian guitar” -- a method of playing the six-string guitar flat on his lap, playing with the left hand, sliding a piece of metal or glass along the strings. His career took off in 1927/1928 and he recorded and composed hundred of 78 records. He founded the Orchestre Otto and the Orchestre Hawaien Gino Bordin (the name he took in France). In concerts and radio appearances, sometimes with his wife Margot Pépin (also a guitar player), he played jazz and even African-style music with his Hawaian guitar. His career seems to have faded after the war -- he was taught guitar students at his home on Rue Adran in Paris and at private schools. In Patrick Modiano’s 1982 novel, “De si braves garçons,” he appears as a character as his real rather than fictional self. In 2012, a bilingual (French and English) plaque was installed on the outside wall of his former home in Paris.

French composer and conductor Charles Clerc began his schooling at a high school in Toulouse, but his family moved to Paris so that Charles could attend the École Centrale to train as an electrical engineer like his father. The paternal plan for Charles changed when an army buddy who taught at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique noted that Charles seemed to have some musical inclination. So young Charles was sent for oboe lessons; he succeeded in gaining entrance to the Conservatoire and won first prize there in classical orchestral music. Plans changed again, however, when Charles decided that songs were what really interested him. He began successfully composing songs under the pen name Charles Borel-Clerc. Félix Mayo was one of the first to sing his songs, but there followed many other famous singers, including Maurice Chevalier. He wrote such legendary songs as “Ah, le petit vin blanc,” and sometimes accompanied them with his Orchestre Symphique Borel-Clerc. His songs have been used in many film soundtracks and have sold over 1,500,000 records.