Seignobos was born to a Republican Protestant family in 1854 at Lamastre in the
Ardèche department of France, the son of Charles-André Seignobos, the deputy for Ardèche from 1871 to 1881 and again from 1890 to 1892 and also the Councillor of Lamastre from 1852 to 1892. He passed his
baccalaureat in 1871 at Tournon, where he studied with the French
Symbolist poet and critic
Stéphane Mallarmé. After a stellar academic career at the
École normale supérieure where he took courses with
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges and
Ernest Lavisse, he completed a degree in history. Afterwards, he moved to Germany where he studied for two years, spending most of his time in
Göttingen,
Berlin,
Munich, and
Leipzig. Named to a tenured position as Maître de conférences at the
University of Burgundy in 1879 and a professor at the Écoles des hautes études internationales et politiques (HEI-HEP), he defended his doctoral thesis in 1881, and then was named to a position at the
Sorbonne. He is regarded, along with his friend the physiologist
Louis Lapicque, as one of the two founders of the scientific and humanistic community "Sorbonne-Plage" at L'Arcouest in Ploubazlanec, near
Paimpol. (Marie Curie had a house constructed there and moved there in 1912). His brother Raymond Seignobos succeeded their father (who had been a mayor for just a few weeks in 1870) as Mayor of Lamastre from 1895 to 1914. Charles Seignobos died in April 1942 after having been placed under house arrest at
Ploubazlanec in
Brittany. == Career ==