Suicide: A Sociological Study Author: [France] Emile Durkheim Translator: Feng Yunwen Publisher: The Commercial Press Chinese Translation of World Academic Masterpieces Series

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) is a French sociologist and one of the founders of sociology. He was born on April 15, 1858 in a Jewish clergy family in Epinal, a small town in the Vosges department of France. He studied Hebrew, the Old Testament and the Jewish law code in his childhood. In his youth, he gave up religious beliefs and embarked on the path of empirical science. In 1879, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and graduated in 1882. From 1882 to 1887, he taught at the provincial middle school. During this period, he went to Germany for a year to study pedagogy, philosophy and ethics, and was deeply influenced by W. Wundt's experimental psychology. From 1887 to 1902, he taught at the University of Bordeaux, where he founded the first pedagogy and sociology department in France. In 1891, he was appointed the first sociology professor in France. In 1898, he founded the French Annals of Sociology. A group of young sociologists formed around this publication - the Annales de Sociologie. After 1902, he taught at the University of Paris. The First World War interrupted the academic research of this anti-war scholar. His son and many students died on the battlefield, which greatly stimulated him. He died in Paris on November 15, 1917. His major works include: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), etc.