doyen

noun

Etymology: Borrowed from French doyen, from Late Latin decānus, from Latin decem. Compare the doublet dean.

1. A commander in charge of ten men.
2. The senior, or eldest male member of a group.

   “At every turn, Collyers's aggressive new management in London was out-maneuvering and out promoting the double doyens of the rarefied art auction world. Old-timers at Collyers referred to Christie's and Sotheby's as “the Cow and the Sow,” lumping them together in frequent attitudes of disdain, in an attempt to make up for decades of being the brunt of bad jokes.”

   “Conant's sense of science's world-historic mission did not especially endear him to Harvard's doyens, most of whom still operated with a liberal arts college model of the university in which the humanities reigned supreme and even the natural sciences were treated more as teaching than research subjects.”

3. A leading light, or exemplar of a particular practice or movement.

   “Unlike the latter, however, Shifu's seriousness allowed no compromise; his criticism of Zhang ji even brought him into conflict with Wu Zhihui, one of the doyens of anarchism in China.”

   “2008 July 3, Amanda Schaffer, “The Sex Difference Evangelists”, part 3: “Mars, Venus, Babies, and Hormones”, in Slate, In an interview, even Simon Baron-Cohen, another doyen of sex-difference claims, offered up some caution.”