Marc Bloch, one of the great historians of our time, was born at Lyons in 1886 and educated at the Ecole Normale in Paris. He was for many years Professor of Medieval History in the University of Strasbourg before being called in 1936 to the Chair of Economic History at the Sorbonne. He fought in both World Wars, volunteering for active service in 1939 when he was already fifty0three. After the fall of France in 1940 he went to the South, where he taught successively at the Universities of Clermont-Ferrand and Montpellier. When the South too was occupied he joined the Resistance, but was caught by the Gestapo, tortured, and finally shot in the neighborhood of Lyons in June 1944.