One of the figures of French intellectual life has died out. The historian and publisher Pierre Noraa member of the French Academy, died on Monday at the age of 93, his family announced to AFP.
« Anne Sinclair Nora It is a pain to announce the death of her husband Pierre Nora which occurred on June 2, 2025, “the family said in a statement sent by the historian’s nephew, Olivier Nora. The ex-journalist star of TF1 had married this historian a few years ago.
“He has changed the way we write the story”
Pierre Nora was one of the big names in publishing, at Gallimard, where he created and managed several reference collections in History and Human Sciences. He is known as the prime contractor of a work which refers to the cultural and historical identity of France, “places of memory”, in three volumes (“La République” in 1984, “La Nation” in 1986 and “Les France” in 1992).
After having trained generations of students as Director of Studies at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) and as a teacher at Sciences Po Paris, he was elected to the French Academy in 2001. He published two books of memories in 2021 and 2022 at Gallimard, “youth” and “a strange obstinacy”.
“He changed the way in which history is written” by having “contributed to questioning positivist teaching, which reduces history to the pure course of events”, said in 2011 the historian Steven Englund.
