Brigadier General, French Air Force; test pilot; advanced mathematics degree from Military School Grenoble, 1970; engineering degree from the French Air Force Academy, Salon de Provence, 1973; was selected for the French astronaut team and assigned as double for Soyuz TM-7; from 61 European candidates for the ESA 1991 selection one of six French candidates, but not selected then; started Mission Specialist training at the NASA Johnson Space Center in 1995; became an ESA Astronaut in November 1999; hobbies: Aeroclub, parachuting and parapenting, tennis, wind-surfing, water-skiing, snow-skiing, cross-country running, wave-surfing, microcomputers; returned to European Astronaut Centre, but was still an active ESA astronaut; from May 2003 - December 2004, Tognini was Head of the Astronaut Division at EAC in Cologne, Germany, January 2005 until early 2012 he was Head of the European Astronaut Centre EAC), Directorate of Human Spaceflight and Exploration, in Cologne, Germany.