Born in Paris, October 18, 1859, Bergson was educated at the Ecole Normale Superieure and the University of Paris. He taught in various secondary schools from 1881 until 1898, when he accepted a professorship at the Ecole Normale Superieure. Two years later he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the College de France.
In 1921 Bergson resigned from the College de France to devote his time to international affairs, politics, moral problems, and religion; he was converted to Roman Catholicism (his parents were Jewish). He published only one book during the last two decades of his life, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932; trans. 1935), in which he aligned his own philosophy with Christianity. In 1927 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. He died January 4, 1941.
The influence of Bergson's earlier books, as well as his many papers and lectures, on the philosophers, artists, and writers of the 20th century is extensive. He was a master prose stylist and a brilliant lecturer, his mystical yet vital style contrasting with the formalistic materialism of his peers.