A native of France, Pierre Angenieux is an internationally-famed optical designer whose work in lens design, development and manufacturing became the state-of-the-art, especially in his zoom and wide angle lenses developed for 16 and 35mm cinematography. During his career he worked closely with many film directors, including Abel Gance, for whom he developed the "pictograph," an optical system for lining up a small-scale foreground with a full-scale background.

Angenieux received a Scientific or Technical award in 1964 "for the development of a ten-to-one Zoom Lens for cinematography."