French Fourth Republic

State · 1945–1957 CE · at its largest around 1945 CE

France's parliamentary republic established after liberation, under a 1946 constitution. Plagued by short-lived governments and colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria, it gave way to de Gaulle's Fifth Republic in 1958.

On its lands while it lasted

Max Planck (1858 CE – 1947 CE): German theoretical physicist in Berlin whose 1900 hypothesis that energy is emitted in discrete quanta founded quantum theory. He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Winston Churchill (1874 CE – 1965 CE): British statesman who was Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945, leading Britain through World War II, and again from 1951 to 1955.
Albert Einstein (1879 CE – 1955 CE): German-born theoretical physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and explained the photoelectric effect, for which he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Alexander Fleming (1881 CE – 1955 CE): Scottish bacteriologist at St Mary’s Hospital, London, who discovered penicillin in 1928. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.
Pablo Picasso (1881 CE – 1973 CE): Spanish painter and sculptor who spent most of his life in France. Co-founder of Cubism, he was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
Adolf Hitler (1889 CE – 1945 CE): Austrian-born dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He started World War II in Europe and bears chief responsibility for the Holocaust. He died by suicide in Berlin.
World War II in Europe (1939–1945 CE): The European theatre of the deadliest war in history, from Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 to its surrender in May 1945. Tens of millions died, including six million Jews in the Holocaust.
Stephen Hawking (1942 CE – 2018 CE): English theoretical physicist at Cambridge known for his work on black holes, including the prediction that they emit radiation, and for the bestseller A Brief History of Time (1988), written despite motor neurone disease.
Potsdam Conference (1945 CE): From 17 July to 2 August 1945 the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain met at Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam to decide the occupation of Germany and to demand Japan’s unconditional surrender.
Cold War (1947–1991 CE): The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies, fought through an arms race, proxy wars and the space race rather than direct war. Divided Berlin was its emblem; it ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Declaration of Human Rights (1948 CE): Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris on 10 December 1948, the declaration set out for the first time fundamental human rights to be universally protected.
DNA double helix (1953 CE): James Watson and Francis Crick at Cambridge proposed the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, drawing on X-ray work by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins in London.
Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955 CE): English computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web at CERN near Geneva in 1989 and in 1994 founded the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT.
Independence of Ghana (1957 CE): On 6 March 1957 the Gold Coast became independent as Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah, the first sub-Saharan colony to gain independence from European rule.
Treaty of Rome (1957 CE): Signed in Rome in March 1957 by Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the treaty created the European Economic Community.