After schooling in his native Paris, he taught high school in Clermont-Ferrand and Angers, France. In 1889 he returned to Paris and in 1900 was appointed professor at the College de France where the elite flocked to hear his lectures. Greatly admired for his literary style he was elected a member of the Academie Francaise in 1914 and received the Nobel prize in Literature in 1928. His philosophy was highly influential and his Matter and Memory led to the coining of the term 'Bergsonism'. His doctrine of creative evolution received literary echoes as in the works of Bernard Shaw. His essay on laughter aroused great interest. Bergson was remote from Judaism and was attracted to Catholicism but was deterred from conversion by the prevalence of anti-Semitism. When the Germans occupied France, he refused to be exempted from the anti-Jewish laws and his death was hastened by a chill contracted when he insisted on going out and standing in line to be registered as a Jew.

Bibliography:

BERGSON, Henri. Time and free will: an essay on the immediate data of consciousness. Authorized translation by F.L. Pogson. Pp. xxiii, 252. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2001

BERGSON, Henri. Duration and simultaneity: Bergson and the Einsteinian Universe. Edited and with an introduction by Robin Durie. Translation of supplementary material Mark Lewis and Robin Durie. 2nd ed. Pp. xxvii, 211. Manchester: Clinamen Press, c1999

BERGSON, Henri. The creative mind. New York : Citadel Press, 2002

BERGSON, Henri. Masot ve-hartsa'ot. Tirgem mi-Tsarfatit Ya`akov Levi. Tel Aviv: Masadah, 707 [1946 or 1947]

BERGSON, Henri. Cours de Bergson sur la philosophie grecque. [Volume IV]. [Edite par] Henri Hude avec la collaboration de Francoise Vinel. Pp. 278. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2000

BERGSON, Henri. The meaning of the war, life & matter in conflict. With an introduction by H. Wildon Carr. Pp. 47. London: T. F. Unwin, ltd. [1915]

BERGSON, Henri. Memoire et vie. Textes choisis par Gilles Deleuze 3e. edition Pp. 156. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1968

Links:

Henri Bergson at Nobel e-Museum

Henri Bergson - Books and Writers