Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), the son and grandson of rabbis, was born in the Alsatian town of Épinal, Vosges, France, on April 15. In 1887 he married Louise Julie Dreyfus, and the death of their son in World War I hastened Durkheim's own premature end in Paris on November 15.

Émile Durkheim, 1858–1917. Durkheim was one of the founders of 20th-century sociology. (The Library of Congress.)

In 1870, when Durkheim was twelve, German troops occupied his home during the Franco-Prussian War, forcing him to confront a normless, anomic (unstable) social environment and loss of collective well-being that was later to figure as a theme in his sociological research. He attended the École Normale Superieure (1879–1882), France's best teachers' college, and formed an early friendship with Jean Jaurès (1859–1914), later a leading socialist, which broadened Durkheim's academic and political interests to include philosophy and political action. In 1887 he was named professor...