Émile Durkheim

About Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) remains a towering figure in social science, ranked #411 globally by MIT's Pantheon project for his profound historical importance. As a foundational sociologist, his work established the discipline as an academic field separate from psychology and philosophy. Key contributions include developing the concept of social facts-external social structures that shape individual behavior-and his seminal study on suicide, which used statistical methods to analyze a deeply personal act, demonstrating the power of sociological inquiry.

In the modern digital landscape of 2025, Durkheim's online attention appears relatively modest compared to his historical weight. He garnered approximately 340K Wikipedia views, placing his Attention Gap at a near 1x alignment-suggesting a reasonable level of current cultural relevance relative to his foundational status. However, this average attention contrasts sharply with others from a similar era; for instance, Mark Twain (#543 importance) commanded 2.3M views, over six times Durkheim’s traffic, highlighting a substantial disconnect in contemporary online focus.

The year-over-year data shows a slight decline, with Wikipedia views dropping by 13.2% in 2025, and momentum further slackening by 2% between the first and third quarters, suggesting a slow drift from the forefront of popular digital historical recall.