François Zola (7 August 1796 – 27 March 1847) was an Italian-born French engineer. He built the Zola Dam creating Lac Zola near Le Tholonet in Aix-en-Provence. Zola (originally Francesco Zolla) was an Italian engineer with some Greek ancestry, who was born in Venice in 1795; his mother was French. He lived in Paris with his wife Émilie Aubert when their son, the author Émile Zola, was born in 1840.The family moved to Aix-en-Provence when Émile was three years old. François died four years later, in 1847.