His grandfather fought in the Polish resistance against the Prussians.
André Previn | André Breton | Andre Agassi | André Malraux | André Derain | Victor André Cornil | Carl Andre | Andre Ward | Fabrizio De André | André the Giant | André Heller | André Gide | André-Gaston Prételat | André | Andre Norton | André Masséna | André Guignard | André Franquin | Andre Begemann | Peter Andre | Andre Williams | Andre Ware | André Leon Talley | André Le Nôtre | André Glucksmann | André Charlot | André Sogliuzzo | André Marie Constant Duméril | André-Jacques Garnerin | André Bauer |
Later, he was influenced by scientific contacts with André Lichnerowicz, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Chen Ning Yang and Abdus Salam.
In 1957, at a conference at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, appealing to various mathematical tools developed by John Lighton Synge, A. Z. Petrov and André Lichnerowicz, Pirani explained more clearly than had previously been possible the central role played by the Riemann tensor and in particular the tidal tensor in general relativity.