Frenchman Emile Durkheim was born into a long line of devout Jewish rabbis – his great-grandfather, grandfather and father.  However, Emile decided at an early age that the line would end with him.  In fact, much of his study was dedicated to proving that religion stemmed from social rather than the divine.

While a student at École Normale Supérieure, Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society.  But because the French school system had no social science curriculum, Emile majored in philosophy, which he found boring, and graduated second to last in his class. 

Durkheim spent a year studying sociology in Germany after graduation, and then returned to Bordeaux where France’s first teacher’s training center had been started.  Emile taught pedagogy and social science – a first in France.  Durkheim is credited with reforming the French school system and introducing social science into the curriculum.  However, his beliefs that religion and morality could be easily explained by social science earned him many critics.

In 1893, Durkheim published his doctoral dissertation, “The Division of Labour in Society,” which was a study of how social order was maintained in differing societies.  In 1895 he published a manifesto on what sociology was and how it should be done and founded the first Department of Sociology at the University of Bordeaux.  Durkheim founded the journal L'Année Sociologique in 1898, which was a source for publishing the works of a growing number of sociology students and collaborators.  And in 1897, Emile Durkheim published what was probably his best known work, Suicide.  In this study, Durkheim explored the different suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics, maintaining that the strong social control of the Catholic Church resulted in a lower suicide rate.

Durkheim was appointed chair of education at the Sorbonne in 1902, which was a prominent position for him.  And because of this influence, his lectures were the only ones that were mandatory for all students.  By 1912, Emile Durkheim was permanently assigned Chair of Education and Sociology; this same year, he published what would be his last major study – Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.  He and co-author Marcel Mauss examined the role that religion and mythology played in shaping the view and personality of people in mechanical societies.

Emile was a leftist when it came to politics, which often put him on the opposite side as his colleagues.  Durkheim sought a secular, rational form of French life, but World War I and the propaganda that followed made it difficult for him to sustain this position.  Many of the generation of students that Durkheim had taught were drafted for service in the war and many perished.  Even Durkheim’s own son was killed in the war, which caused such mental anguish for Emile that he never fully recovered from the loss.  In 1917, Durkheim suffered a stroke from overwork and emotional strain.  His strength returned for a few months and he resumed work.  However, later that year, Emile Durkheim died from exhaustion.  He was interred in Paris.