Émile Boutroux

Biography

Émile Boutroux was born on 28 July 1845, at Montrouge near Paris. He attended the lycée Napoléon (now lycée Henri IV), and graduated in 1865 to the École Normale Supérieure. He then continued his education at Heidelberg University between 1869 and 1870 where he was taught by Hermann von Helmholtz and encountered German philosophy. In 1874, he defended two doctoral theses: one, "De Veritatibus aeternis apud Cartesium" ("On Eternal Truths According to Descartes"), under the supervision of Félix Ravaisson; and the other, "De la contingence des lois de la nature" ("The Contingency of the Laws of Nature"), under Jules Lachelier.

His first employment was the post of philosophy professor at the lycée in Caen.

Between 1874 and 1876, Boutroux taught at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Nancy, and while there, he fell in love with and married Aline Poincaré, the sister of the scientist and mathematician Henri Poincaré. In 1880, his son, Pierre, was born. Pierre Boutroux was himself to become a distinguished mathematician and historian of science.

In 1888, Boutroux was made professor of the history of modern philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris.

He was elected a member of the Academy of the Moral and Political Sciences in 1898, and in 1902, he became Director of the Thiers Foundation. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1912.

Boutroux died on 22 November 1921, aged 76, in Paris.