# Emile Durkheim

## Biography

Emile Durkheim was a seminal French sociologist, born on April 15, 1858, in Épinal, France. Though initially destined to follow a long family line of rabbis, he pursued a secular academic path, ultimately graduating from the École Normale Supérieure. He is widely recognized as one of the principal architects of modern social science, alongside Karl Marx and Max Weber. Durkheim formally established sociology as an academic discipline, creating the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, where he became France's first professor of the subject.

His foundational works include "The Division of Labour in Society" (1893), "The Rules of Sociological Method" (1895), and "Suicide" (1897), a pioneering study that underscored the distinct nature of sociological inquiry from psychology. In 1898, he founded the influential journal L'Année sociologique. Durkheim's theories centered on social facts and the mechanisms of social cohesion, introducing concepts such as mechanical and organic solidarity to explain how societies maintain their integrity. He later taught at the Sorbonne and remained a dominant figure in French intellectual life until his death in 1917.

## Books

- [The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life](https://samolit.com/books/96263)