knowledge, morality, social stratification, religion, law, education, and deviance. Some terms that he coined, such as "collective consciousness", are now also used by laypeople. Biography Early life and heritage David Émile Durkheim was born 15 April 1858 in Épinal, Lorraine, France, to Mélanie (Isidor) and Moïse Durkheim, coming into a long lineage of devout French Jews. As his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been rabbis, young Durkheim began his education in a rabbinical school. However, at an early age, he switched schools, deciding not to follow in his family's footsteps. In fact, Durkheim led a completely secular life, whereby much of his work was dedicated to demonstrating that religious phenomena stemmed from social rather than divine factors. Despite this fact, Durkheim did not sever ties with his family or with the Jewish community. Actually, many of his most prominent collaborators and students were Jewish, some even being blood-related. Marcel Mauss, a notable social anthropologist of the prewar era, for instance, was his nephew. Education A precocious student, Durkheim entered the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in 1879, at his third attempt. The entering class that year was one of the most brilliant of the nineteenth century, as many of his classmates, such as Jean Jaurès and Henri Bergson, went on to become major figures in France's intellectual history as well. At the ENS, Durkheim studied under the direction of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a classicist with a social-scientific outlook, and wrote his Latin dissertation on Montesquieu. At the same time, he read Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, whereby Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society very early on in his career. This meant the first of many conflicts with the French academic system, which had no social science curriculum at the time. Durkheim found humanistic studies uninteresting, turning his attention from psychology and philosophy to ethics and, eventually, sociology. He obtained his agrégation in philosophy in 1882, though finishing next to last in his graduating class owing to serious illness the year before. The opportunity for Durkheim to receive a major academic appointment in Paris was inhibited by his approach to society. From 1882 to 1887 he taught philosophy at several provincial schools. In 1885 he decided to leave for Germany, where for two years he studied sociology at the universities of Marburg, Berlin and Leipzig. As Durkheim indicated in several essays, it was in Leipzig that