1839 in France

Incumbents

• Monarch - Louis Philippe I

  Events

• 9 January - The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.
• 2 March - Legislative election held.
• 12–13 May - Failed insurrection led by Louis Auguste Blanqui, Armand Barbès, Martin Bernard, and the Société des Saisons as part of the struggle for French worker's rights.
• 22 June - Louis Daguerre receives patent for his camera.
• 6 July - Legislative election held.
• 19 August - French government gives Louis Daguerre a pension and gives the daguerreotype "for the whole world".
• 15 October - Abd al-Kader declares a jihad against the French.

  Births

• 19 January - Paul Cézanne, painter
• 27 January - Marie Adolphe Carnot, chemist, mining engineer and politician
• 16 March - Sully Prudhomme, poet and essayist, winner of first Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901
• 17 March - Louis Ricard, Lawyer and Politician
• 5 May - Louis Émile Javal, ophthalmologist
• 21 May - Joseph Albert Alexandre Glatigny, poet
• 9 August - Gaston Paris, writer and scholar
• 20 August - Gaston du Bousquet, steam locomotive engineer

  Full date unknown

• Georges Leclanché, electrical engineer
• Albert Tissandier, architect, aviator, illustrator, editor and archaeologist

  Deaths

• 10 January - Charles Philippe Lafont, violinist and composer
• 2 March - Charlotte Napoléone Bonaparte, niece of Napoleon I
• 2 April - Toussaint-Bernard Éméric-David, archaeologist and writer on art
• 9 May - Joseph Fiévée, journalist, novelist, essayist and playwright
• 13 May - Hugues-Bernard Maret, duc de Bassano, statesman and journalist
• 19 July - Maurice de Guérin, poet
• 30 September - Joseph François Michaud, historian and publicist
• 31 December - Hyacinthe-Louis de Quelen, Archbishop of Paris

  Full date unknown

• Laurent Jean François Truguet, admiral