Duruy, Victor

Duruy, Victor vēktôrˈ dürüēˈ [key], 1811–94, French historian. He was a professor at Reims and Paris, and as minister of public instruction (1863–69) under Napoleon III he encouraged the adoption of the principle of free obligatory elementary education. His best-known work is his Histoire des Romans (7 vol., 1870–85; tr., 8 vol., 1883), but he also wrote other popular histories, notably of Greece and France. He was elected to the French Academy in 1884.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Historians, European: Biographies