L'EcoLE des Mines de is not a school of mines, in spite of its name, nor is it a business school, in spite of the title of this paper. Its nature can be understood in the context of the French system of higher education, which consists of two kinds of institution with little or no connexion between them: 1. The universities, which are similar to those which exist in most countries and are centralized under the Ministry of Education. 2. The schools of engineering, known as which are also public institutions but under various authorities such as: Ecole Polytechnique (Ministry of War), Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (Ministry of Equipment), Agronomic Institute (Ministry of Agriculture), etc. Some of these come under the authority of the Ministry of Education (e.g. Ecole Centrale), but they possess a greater degree of autonomy than the universities. The Ecole des Mines is one of the second category and is under the authority of the Ministry of Industry. The main characteristics of the Grandes Ecoles, as compared with the universities, are the limited number of students, the highly discriminative selection and the stress on general training. For historical reasons which I will not go into here, most responsible positions in industry and government offices are held by former students of the Grandes Ecoles. This fact, combined with the breadth of opportunity and the security which are offered to the graduates, accounts for the great attraction of these schools. The students are selected by means of a difficult entrance examination in which the most important subjectis basic mathematics. The examination takes place two or three years after the end of the students' secondary education, i.e. at an average age of 19 or 20. Roughly 1500 students compete for places at the Ecole des Mines de Paris and only 60 are admitted. Of course most of them compete for admission to other schools, but the Ecole des Mines takes its students from among the best, as is indicated by the fact that the last one admitted usually ranks between 120th and 150th on the list. It follows that our curriculum is based on the fact that our students belong to the elite of the mathematical brains of their generation and that they will have managerial responsibilities in most branches of industry. Of course they will be primarily engineers and, at least during the first years of professional practice, they will have technical responsibilities in production or research. Although no