Marc Bloch was born at Lyons in 1886. He was for many years professor of medieval history at the University of Strasbourg before being called in 1936 to the Chair of Economic History at the Sorbonne. In 1939, he volunteered for active service; he was already fifty-three. After the fall of France in 1940, he went to the south, where he taught 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 June 1944.