Raymond Queneau (French: ) (21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, and co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (Oulipo), notable for his wit and his cynical humour. Queneau was born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot. He received his first baccalauréat in 1919 for Latin and Greek, and a second in 1920 for philosophy, then studied at the Sorbonne (1921–23), where he was a fair student of both letters and mathematics, graduating with certificates in philosophy and psychology. Queneau performed military service as a zouave in Algeria and Morocco during the years 1925–26. He was drafted in 1939 after Germany's invasion of Poland, and was demobilized in 1940. Through the remainder of World War II, he and his family lived with the painter Élie Lascaux in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat. He married Janine Kahn in 1928, with whom he had a son, Jean-Marie, in 1934. They remained married until Janine's death ...