Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim was born at Épinal in Lorraine in 1858 into a line of rabbis: his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been rabbis, and his family hoped he would carry on the tradition. Instead he gave up religion at school and entered the École normale supérieure in Paris, where his fellow students included the philosopher Bergson and the politician Jaurès. He studied positive social science in Germany, and at twenty-nine taught France's first course in sociology at the University of Bordeaux; later he moved to the Sorbonne, founded the journal L'Année sociologique and trained a whole generation of scholars, making sociology an independent discipline. In the First World War his only son was killed at the front; overwhelmed with grief, he died little more than a year later, at only fifty-nine. He is acknowledged as one of the founders of sociology.