Laurent Fabius (born 1946) was the Socialist wunderkind of French politics in the 1980s. He was not yet forty when President François Mitterrand named him prime minister in 1984 and gave him primary responsibility for producing an economic recovery.

Laurent Fabius was born on August 20, 1946, in Paris. Like many French politicians of the left as well as the right, he was a product of an elite, rigorous schooling. He was a graduate of institutions that are training grounds for academics (Ècole Normale Supérieure), bureaucrats (Ècole National de l'Administration) and future leaders (Institut d'Etudes Politiques). Like most of the leading lights of French politics at that time, he began his career as a civil servant with Council of State. In fact, as prime minister he was still technically on leave from the council, to which he could conceivably return when he left office.

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