Henri Bergson: A Short Biography

Henri Bergson was an influential 20th century French Philosopher, whose ideas on time and duration have been influential in both philosophy and literature.

Henri Bergson was born in 1859. He earned his doctorate in 1889 with a dissertation Time and Free Will, which was later published and remains one of his most influential works.  Another important work, Matter and Memory was published in 1896, followed be Creative Evolution in 1907 and Duration and Simultaneity in 1921.


Bergson won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, due to "his rich an vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented."

Henri Bergson was an outspoken opponent of the Vichy government in France, and though Christian by religion (his father was a Jew from Poland), registered himself as a Jew with the Vichy regime in 1940.

Bergson died in 1941 at the age of eighty one.

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MLA style: "Henri Bergson - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 20 Dec 2010 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1927/bergson-bio.html