Georges Duby was born in Paris in 1919. He completed his secondary education at the Lycée de Mâcon and his higher education at the University of Lyon. He was awarded the Agrégation in geography in 1942, and soon afterwards recruited by medievalist Jean Deniau as an assistant. In 1952, he defended his doctoral thesis in Paris, under the supervision of Charles-Edmond Perrin, on La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise (Society in the 11th and 12thcenturies in the Mâcon region). After a brief spell at the University of Besançon, he was appointed Professor at the University of Aix-Marseille in 1953, where he taught until 1970, when he was elected to the History of Medieval Societies chair at the Collège de France. The Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres elected him an ordinary member in 1974, in the chair of Charles-Edmond Perrin. The Académie française welcomed him in 1987, succeeding Marcel Arland. Numerous academies, both French and foreign, have invited him to join their ranks. Many foreign universities, from Poland to the United States of America, from the Mediterranean peninsulas to Scandinavia, have conferred honorary doctorates on him. He was, among other decorations, Commander of the Legion of Honor and had recently been elevated to the dignity of Grand Cross in the National Order of Merit.
Georges Duby died in 1996.
Notice written by Pierre Toubert.