IntroductionEmile Durkheim was born in France in April 1858 and died in November 1917. He belonged to a small Jewish community to which he continued to be close even after the break with the Church Jewish. Coming from a long line of rabbis, he had planned to pursue that profession. Durkheim was known as the father of sociology. He was a liberal, a modernist and a nationalist. He was a very ambitious man; this ambition was illustrated by his lifetime achievements. During the conflict surrounding the Dreyfus Affair, Durkheim used the new field of sociology to try to make sense of the society and world around him. The Dreyfus Affair was a government cover-up that blamed a Jewish captain named Dreyfus. It turned into a political scandal that divided the French people. As Collins and Makowsky (2010) stated, this allowed him to discover that “society is a ritual order, a collective consciousness founded on the emotional rhythms of human interaction” (p. 92). Students at the University of Paris were not free from conflict, and professors lectured for the Dreyfusard cause. At the time he was one of the most renowned professors at the University of Paris. He went to Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory to investigate the social sciences although he accepted Comte's sociology rather than psychology. He wanted to take sociology and do what Wundt had done with psychology. Durkheim wanted sociology to be a researchable science rather than a philosophy. He became a professor at the Ecole Normale and then, at the beginning of the 20th century, the first chair of the science of sociology. Durkheim published several works on different sociology topics, including suicide, religion, and… center of paper… Religion was viewed from the perspective of its impact on society and life. It was divided into sacred and profane beliefs and rites. He looks at the division of labor by looking at solidarity. It discusses two types of solidarity which are mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. Works Cited Collins, R., & Makowsky, M. (2010). The discovery of society (8th ed.). New York, New York: McGraw-Hill. Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide: a study in sociology. (J.A. Spaulding and G. Simpson, trans.)United States: The Free Press.Durkheim, E. (1984). The division of labor in society. (W. Halls, trans.) New York, NewYork: The Free Press. Durkheim, E. (1965). The elementary forms of religious life. New York, New York: TheFree Press.Jones, R.A. (2009, March 19). Durkheim home page. Excerpt from Durkheim's pages: durkheim.uchicago.edu/index.html