DURKHEIM, EMILE (1858-1917), French philosopher, was born on April 15, 1858, at Les Vosges, and studied at the 1 cole Normale Superieure under Boontroux. After travelling in Ger many, he accepted the chair of sociology founded for him at Bordeaux in 1887, and five years later became professor in Paris. Contending that progress is a mechanical fact, Durkheim main tained that social investigations should be scientifically carried out and special attention given to facts capable of exact determination. The mentality of the group, he thought, is not simply that of the individual, but has its own specific reality. Because the mental life of the individual comes principally from his social environ ment, education is a "filling-up" process as well as a "drawing out" one.
Durkheim's chief publications are De la division du travail social (1893) ; Les regles de la methode sociologique (1894) ; Le Suicide (1897) ; Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse, le systeme totemique en Australie (1912; Eng. trans., 1915) ; and Sociologie et philosophie (1924) . In 1898 he founded L'Annee Sociologique, which he edited annually.
See C. E. Gehlke, Durkheim's Contributions to Sociological Theory (1915) ; and R. Lacombe, La Methode Sociologique de Durkheim (1926).
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