• Émile Durkheim born April 15, 1858, Epinal Vosges in Lorraine France and died on Nov.

15,
1917, Paris.
• A French social scientist who developed a vigorous methodology combining empirical
research with sociological theory. He is widely regarded as the founder of the French school
of sociology.
• Son of a prominent Jewish rabbi Moise Durkheim. That is why during his childhood he was
thought to become like his father.
• He was sent to a a rabbinical school. However, things did not turn out as planned when
Emile moved to Paris. There he became interested in Catholicism but abandoned it as well
realizing he preferred to study religion from an agnostic standpoint as opposed to being
indoctrinated.
• He was a brilliant student, and was awarded several prizes and honors. He studied in some
prestigious schools in France like College d’Epinal, Lycee Louis-Le-Grand in Paris and Ecole
Normale Superieure.
• However when his father become ill which made him quite depressed. Which made it hard for
him to accept in Ecole Normale Superieure and as a matter of fact he was rejected two times
• Aside from his family problem another contributing factor for his failure is Durkheim's scientific
way thinking did not make it easy for him to do well in the studies he required to gain
admittance into the Ecole Normale Supérieure.
• It wasn't until 1879, at the age of 21, on the third try that he finally attained his goal, joining
the ranks of other great intellectual and political leaders such as socialist Jean Jaurès,
psychologist Pierre Janet, philosophers Henri Bergson, Felix Rauh and Maurice Blondel, all of
whom had been, or were soon to be studying at the the famed institution.
• Though he became ill in 1881, Durkheim passed the difficult examination required for
admission to the teaching staff of state secondary schools, and was soon thereafter teaching
philosophy.
• 5 years later, in 1887, Durkheim married Louise Dreyfus, with whom he had a son, André,
and later a daughter, Marie. It was also that same year that Durkheim was appointed
"Chargé des Cours de Pédagogie et de Sciences Sociales" (Officer Course Pedagogy and
Social Science) at Bordeaux, by departing teacher Alfred Espinas and Louis Liard, a devoted
republican who was then Director of Higher Education in France.
• The "Sciences Sociales" part of the appointment had been tailored to fit Durkheim's new
ideas, and thus, sociology became part of the French academic curriculum.
• Published Works includes

i. Division of Labour and Society

ii. Rules of Sociological Method
iii. Le Suicide
iv. Full professorship at Bordeaux

• Durkheim was devastated by his son's death. Even forbidding friends to even mention his
son's name in his presence. Burying himself all the more in the war effort, he collapsed from a
stroke after speaking passionately at one of his innumerable committee meetings.
• After resting for several months, relieved by America's entry into the war, he recovered
sufficiently to again take up his work on La Morale; but on November 15, 1917, he died at the
age of 59.

REFERENCE
http://www.emile-durkheim.com/emile_durkheim_bio_001.htm

http://www.wepapers.com/Papers/81841/Emile_Durkheim_(1858-
1917_powerpoint_presentation.ppt

http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Biography.html
 MAX WEBER (1864-1920)
German sociologist and political economist
Best known for his thesis of the "Protestant Ethic," relating Protestantism to
capitalism, and for his ideas on bureaucracy

Quick Facts
Full Karl Emil Maximilian Weber
Name

Born 21 April 1864

Erfurt, Thuringia, Prussian Saxony

Died 14 June 1920 (Age 56, pneumonia)

Munich, Bavaria

Influenc Immanuel Kant, Heinrich Rickert,Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg

es Simmel, Werner Sombart

Works Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904–
05; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism)
Politics as a Vocation
Economy and Society

Early Life and Family Relationships

• Weber was born to a family with notable heritage. He was the eldest of the seven
children of Max Weber Sr. and Helene Fallenstein. His father was a wealthy and
prominent civil servant and member of the National Liberal Party. His mother
descended from French Huguenot immigrants, which had for generations produced
public servants and academicians.
• His parents represented two, often conflicting, poles of identity between which he
struggled throughout his life - worldly statesmanship and ascetic scholarship.

Education
• In 1882, Weber left home to enroll at the University of Heidelberg to study law,
interrupting his studies after two years to fulfill his year of military service at
Strassburg. After his release from the military, he was asked by his father to finish his
studies at the University of Berlin, where he could live at home. From 1884 until his
marriage in 1893, he left his fathers' house only for a semester of study at Göttingen
in 1886, and for some brief periods of military manoeuvres with his reserve unit.
• In 1886, Weber passed the examination for Referendar, comparable to the bar
association examination in the British and American legal systems.
• He earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a dissertation on legal history
entitled The History of Medieval Business Organisations.
• Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, The Roman Agrarian
History and its Significance for Public and Private Law, working with August Meitzen.

Career
• Weber spent his mid- and late-20s working simultaneously in two totally
unremunerative apprenticeships--as a lawyer's assistant and as a university
assistant. He was financially unable to leave home until the autumn of 1893. At that
time he received a temporary position in jurisprudence at the University of Berlin and
married Marianne Schnitger, a second cousin. They would have no children.
• Weber became a professor in political economy at Freiburg in 1894, and in 1896,
at Heidelberg. There Weber became a central figure in the so-called "Weber Circle,"
composed of other intellectuals such as his wife Marianne.
• In 1897, his father died and Weber collapsed with a nervous breakdown. This
condition forced him to reduce his teaching and leave his course in the fall of 1899.
He did not return to teaching till 1919.
 • In 1903 Weber was able to resume scholarly work. He accepted a position as
associate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare. In 1904, Weber
began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his
essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which became his most
famous work. Indeed, Weber produced his most important work in the 17 years
between the worst part of his illness and his death.
• At the outbreak of World War I, Weber, volunteered for service and was appointed
as a reserve officer and put in charge of organising the army hospitals in Heidelberg,
a role he fulfilled until the end of 1915. Weber's views on the war and the expansion
of the German empire changed during the course of the conflict. At first, he was a
fervent nationalist supporter of the war, but then he grew disillusioned with the
German war policies, eventually refashioning himself as one of the most vocal critics
of the Kaiser government in a time of war.
• Frustrated with politics, Weber resumed teaching in 1919, first at the University of
Vienna, then, after 1919, at the University of Munich. His lectures from that period
were collected into major works, such as the General Economic History, Science as a
Vocation and Politics as a Vocation.
• Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich on 14
June 1920. At the time of his death, Weber had not finished writing his magnum
opus on sociological theory: Economy and Society. His widow Marianne helped
prepare it for its publication in 1921–22.

Sources: www.biography.com/articles/Max-Weber; plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/; wikipedia.org