Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim studied at the Lycée Louis le Grand and the Collège d’Épinal. In the latter institution he received baccalaureats in letters and sciences in 1874 and 1875, respectively. He won entrance (by examination) to the École Normale Supérieure in 1879 and passed his aggrégation (qualifying him to teach at the secondary level) in 1882.

Émile Durkheim taught philosophy at various lycées between 1882 and 1887, when he was appointed lecturer at the University of Bordeaux, where he later (1896) became professor of social science. In 1902 he moved to the Sorbonne, where he was appointed professor of education in 1906 and professor of education and sociology in 1913.

Émile Durkheim’s major works included The Division of Labour in Society (1893), The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897), Pedagogical Evolution in France (published posthumously in 1938), and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). 

Émile Durkheim was one of the founding figures of social science and the creator (in France) of sociology as an academic discipline. Among his influential doctrines is that social phenomena and institutions (”social facts”) constitute an independent reality that cannot be reduced to the psychological or biological properties of individuals and their interactions.