Lucien Febvre

Born in France in July 1878, Febvre trained as a historian at a moment when the field still centered on kings and treaties. He broke with that tradition, launching the Annales School and insisting history attend to structure and everyday life, not just political theater. He also served as initial editor of the Encyclopédie française alongside Anatole de Monzie, steering a major reference work through turbulent decades. The movement he built outlasted him: when he died in September 1956, the Annales approach had already become a dominant current in European historiography.