Émile Durkheim

David Émile Durkheim (; French: [emil dyʁkɛm] or [dyʁkajm]; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with Karl Marx and Max Weber.

Much of Durkheim's work concerns the inability of societies to maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity, an era in which traditional social and religious ties are much less universal, and in which new social institutions have come into being. His conception of the scientific study of society laid the groundwork for modern sociology. He used such scientific tools as statistics, surveys, and historical observation in his analysis of suicides in Roman Catholic and Protestant groups.

Durkheim's first major sociological work was De la division du travail social (1893; The Division of Labour in Society), followed in 1895 by Les Règles de la méthode sociologique (The Rules of Sociological Method). Also in 1895, he set up the first European department of sociology and became France's first professor of sociology. His seminal monograph, Le Suicide (1897), a study of suicide rates in Roman Catholic and Protestant populations, pioneered modern social research, serving to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy. In 1898, he established the journal L'Année sociologique. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912; The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life) presented a theory of religion, comparing the social and cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies.