Émile Durkheim

About the author

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) is widely regarded as one of the founding architects of modern social science, alongside Karl Marx and Max Weber. Born in Épinal, he formally established sociology as an academic discipline, setting up the first European department of sociology in 1895 and becoming France's first professor of the subject. His major works — The Division of Labour in Society, The Rules of Sociological Method, and the landmark Le Suicide — used statistics, surveys, and historical observation to distinguish social science from psychology and philosophy.

His central preoccupation was how societies maintain coherence in modernity as traditional religious and social bonds erode.