{{Infobox royalty | name = Armand de Gramont | title = Duke of Gramont<br>Duke of Guiche, Prince of Bidache | image = File:Duc Armand de Guiche par Nadar.jpg | caption = ''Photograph of the Duke, by Paul Nadar, 1900'' | birth_name = Armand Antoine Agénor de Gramont | birth_date = {{birth date |1879|9|29|df=y}} | birth_place = Paris | death_date = {{death date and age |1962|8|2|1879|9|29|df=y}} | death_place = Château de Vallière, Mortefontaine | house = Gramont | father = Agénor de Gramont, 11th Duke of Gramont | mother = Marguerite de Rothschild | spouse = {{marriage|Élaine Greffulhe<br>|1904|1958|reason=died}} | issue = Henri de Gramont, 13th Duke of Gramont<br>Count Henri Armand de Gramont<br>Count Jean de Gramont<br>Count Charles de Gramont<br>Baroness Philipp von Günzburg }}
'''Armand Antoine Agénor de Gramont, 12th Duke of Gramont''' (29 September 1879 – 2 August 1962) was a French nobleman, scientist and industrialist. He was known by the courtesy title of Duke of Guiche until 1925, when he succeeded his father as Duc de Gramont.
==Early life== Armand was born in Paris on 29 September 1879. He was the eldest son of Antoine Alfred Agénor de Gramont, 11th Duke of Gramont and, his second wife, Baroness Marguerite de Rothschild.<ref name="delaszlocatalogueraisonne">{{cite web |title=Gramont, Antoine XII-Armand, 12th duc de; styled duc de Guiche |url=https://www.delaszlocatalogueraisonne.com/catalogue/the-catalogue/gramont-antoine-xii-armand-12th-duc-de-styled-duc-de-guiche-11801 |website=www.delaszlocatalogueraisonne.com |publisher=The de Laszlo Archive Trust |access-date=18 September 2024}}</ref> From his father's first marriage to Princess Isabelle de Beauvau-Craon, he had an elder half-sister, Élisabeth de Gramont, a writer who married the 8th Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1896.<ref name="Bonald1912">{{cite book |last1=Bonald |first1=Joseph Marie Jacques Ambroise de Bonald vicomte de |title=Samuel Bernard, banquier du Trésor Royal et sa descendance |date=1912 |publisher=Impr. Carrère |page=60 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Samuel_Bernard_banquier_du_Tr%C3%A9sor_Royal/eWmhSfwfTuwC&pg=PA60 |access-date=18 September 2024 |language=fr}}</ref><ref name="Mension-Rigau2011">{{cite book |last1=Mension-Rigau |first1=Eric |title=L'ami du prince: Journal inédit d'Alfred de Gramont (1892-1915) |date=2 February 2011 |publisher=Fayard |isbn=978-2-213-66502-3 |page=237 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/L_ami_du_prince/9W-PBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT237 |access-date=18 September 2024 |language=fr}}</ref> After his mother's death in 1905,<ref name="1905Obit">{{cite news |title=Duchesse de Gramont Dead. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1905/07/26/archives/duchesse-de-gramont-dead.html |access-date=29 June 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=26 July 1905}}</ref> his father married Princess Maria Ruspoli, with whom he had two more sons.<ref name="MRnpg">{{cite web |title=Maria Ruspoli, Duchess de Gramont (1888-1976), Society hostess; former wife of Agénor, 11th Duc de Gramont, and later wife of François Hugo |url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp147107/maria-ruspoli-duchess-de-gramont |website=www.npg.org.uk |publisher=National Portrait Gallery, London |access-date=18 September 2024}}</ref><ref name="Duchesse1927">{{cite journal |title=The Beautiful Duchesse de Gramont |journal=Woman's Home Companion |date=1927 |page=37 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Woman_s_Home_Companion/SMVMvQyJSBkC&pg=RA1-PA37 |access-date=18 September 2024 |publisher=Crowell & Kirkpatrick Company |language=en}}</ref>
His paternal grandparents were Agénor de Gramont, 10th Duke of Gramont,<ref name="Almanach1908">{{cite book |title=Almanach de Gotha |date=1908 |publisher=Johann Paul Mevius sel. Witwe und Johann Christian Dieterich |page=330 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3_wnAAAAYAAJ&dq=Jeanne+Marie+Sabatier+gramont&pg=PA330 |language=fr}}</ref> and Emma Mary Mackinnon (a daughter of William Alexander Mackinnon, 33rd Chief of the Scottish Clan Mackinnon).<ref name="Harrison1914">{{cite book |last1=of) |first1=Melville Amadeus Henry Douglas Heddle de La Caillemotte de Massue de Ruvigny Ruvigny and Raineval (9th marquis |title=The Titled Nobility of Europe: An International Peerage, Or "Who's Who", of the Sovereigns, Princes and Nobles of Europe |date=1914 |publisher=Harrison & Sons |pages=913 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PUm1lS2j-wQC&pg=PA913 |access-date=29 June 2020 |language=en}}</ref> His maternal grandparents were Louise von Rothschild and Baron Mayer Carl von Rothschild (founder of the "Naples" branch of the Rothschild Family).<ref name="1905Obit">{{cite news |title=Duchesse de Gramont Dead. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1905/07/26/archives/duchesse-de-gramont-dead.html |access-date=29 June 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=26 July 1905}}</ref>
==Career== thumb|left|A Foca PF3L with 135 mm lens and universal viewfinder (1945) In 1908, on the advice of Professor Carlo Bourlet, he established a laboratory for aerodynamic experiments in the garden of a retirement home founded by his parents-in-law in Levallois. In 1911, he defended his thesis for the doctorate in science at the Paris-Saclay Faculty of Sciences, entitled ''Essai d'aérodynamique du plan'', the first thesis devoted to this subject in France. He then won the Fourneyron Prize from the French Academy of Sciences with Gustave Eiffel.
During World War I, Gramont was a motorist interpreter with the British Army Corps, then an aviator in the Technical Section of Aeronautics where he met the scientist Henri Chrétien. In March 1916, the Aviation Manufacturing Service of the Ministry of War asked Gramont to transform his aerodynamics laboratory into a workshop for manufacturing optical devices, particularly collimator sights. He observed the inadequacy of the French Army's equipment in precision optical instruments and the absence of engineers capable of developing them. He then headed a committee in favor of the creation of an institute of applied optics responsible for training a corps of optical engineers. Although the decision in principle was taken by the Government in 1916, the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Optics (SupOptique), which he chaired until his death, did not begin its activities until 1920. His daughter Corisande was a student engineer there.
As an industrialist, with the ambition of competing with German production, he founded in 1919 and managed the company Optique & Précision de Levallois (OPL), which took over from the optical device manufacturing workshop. Its headquarters were located at the same location, 86, Rue Chaptal in Levallois-Perret. The army was its main customer until World War II. In 1938, Armand de Gramont, wanting to diversify OPL's production towards the civilian world, had a factory built at Châteaudun in Eure-et-Loir. The company then produced famous cameras under the Foca brand.<ref name="Prose1971">{{cite book |title=Prose |date=1971 |publisher=Prose Publishers |page=65 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PngqAQAAIAAJ |access-date=20 September 2024 |language=en}}</ref>
==Personal life== [[File:Fim de famille Greffulhe (1904).webm|thumb|right|Wedding of Élaine and the Duke of Guiche in Paris at the La Madeleine Church in 1904]] On 14 November 1904, he married Élaine Greffulhe, the daughter of Count Greffulhe and his wife, Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay (said to be a model for the Duchess of Guermantes in Marcel Proust’s novel, ''À la recherche du temps perdu''). Together, they had five children:<ref name="Jaurgain1968"/>
* ''Antoine'' Agénor ''Henri'' Armand de Gramont, 13th Duke of Gramont (1907–1995), who married Odile Sublet d'Heudicourt de Lenoncourt, a granddaughter of the Marquis d'Heudicourt de Lenoncourt and of Count Albert Gautier Vignal, in 1949.<ref name="Jaurgain1968"/> * ''Henri'' Armand Antoine de Gramont (1909–1994), ''styled'' Count of Gramont, who married Élisabeth Meunier du Houssoy, a daughter of Robert Meunier du Houssoy, in 1939.<ref name="Morgan1972">{{cite book |last1=Morgan |first1=Ted |title=The Way Up: The Memoirs of Count Gramont; a Novel |date=1972 |publisher=Putnam |isbn=978-0-399-10978-2 |page=30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W4sOAAAAMAAJ |access-date=20 September 2024 |language=en}}</ref> * ''Jean'' Armand Antoine de Gramont (1909–1984), ''styled'' Count of Gramont, who married Ghislaine Meunier du Houssoy, a daughter of Robert Meunier du Houssoy, in 1941.<ref name="Morgan1972"/> * ''Charles'' Louis Antoine Armand de Gramont (1911–1976), ''styled'' Count of Gramont, who married Shermine Baras.<ref name="Jaurgain1968"/> * ''Corisande'' Marguerite Élisabeth de Gramont (1920–1980), who married Count Jean-Louis de Maigret in 1945.<ref name="Jaurgain1968"/> They divorced and she married Baron Philipp von Günzburg, son of Baron Pierre von Günzburg, in 1952.<ref name="Jaurgain1968">{{cite book |last1=Jaurgain |first1=Jean de |title=La Maison de Gramont, 1040-1967 ... |date=1968 |publisher=les Amis du Musée pyrénéen, [place de l'Église,] |page=656 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nAMJAQAAIAAJ |access-date=18 September 2024 |language=fr}}</ref>
A rare film clip shows Proust (in bowler hat and grey coat) at Gramont's wedding in 1904.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.classiques-garnier.com/editions/ |title=Link to film clip |access-date=2017-02-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170420183856/http://www.classiques-garnier.com/editions/ |archive-date=2017-04-20 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Proust’s wedding gift to Gramont was apparently a revolver in a leather case inscribed with verses from the bride’s childhood poems.
The Duke died at his Château de Vallière, in Mortefontaine, north of Paris, on 2 August 1962.<ref name="1962Obit">{{cite news |title=DUKE DE GRAMONT, PHYSICIST, 82, DIES; Aerodynamics Expert Was Developer of Microscope |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1962/08/04/archives/duke-de-gramont-physicist-82-dies-aerodynamics-expert-was-developer.html?searchResultPosition=2 |access-date=18 September 2024 |work=The New York Times |date=4 August 1962}}</ref>
===Descendants=== Through his eldest son Henri, he was a grandfather of Antoine de Gramont, 14th Duke of Gramont, himself the father of Antoine, 15th Duke of Gramont.<ref name="delaszlocatalogueraisonne"/>
==Gallery== <gallery> Armand de Gramont.jpg|Portrait of the Duke by Philip de László, 1904 Elaine, Duchesse de Gramont.jpg|Portrait of his wife, Élaine, by Philip de László, 1905 Antoine-Henri, 13th duc de Gramont (1911), by Philip Alexius de László, by Philip Alexius de László.jpg|His eldest son, Henri, 1911 Comte Henri de Gramont and Comte Jean de Gramont, by Philip Alexius de László.jpg|His twin sons, Count Henri and Count Jean, 1921 Charles de Gramont, by Philip Alexius de László.jpg|His youngest son, Count Charles, 1914 Baroness Philipp von Günzburg (née Marguerite Corisande de Gramont), by Philip Alexius de László.jpg|His only daughter, Corisande, 1928 </gallery>
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
==External links== * {{Commons category-inline|Armand de Gramont (1879-1962)}} {{s-start}} {{s-reg|fr}} {{succession box|title=35px|center Duke of Gramont|before=Antoine Alfred ''Agénor'' de Gramont|after=Antoine Agénor ''Henri'' Armand de Gramont |years=1925–1962 }} {{s-end}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gramont, Armand de}} Category:1879 births Category:1962 deaths Category:Dukes of Gramont Category:Rothschild family Category:French people of German-Jewish descent Category:Dukes of Guiche