Emmanuel Todd was born in 1951 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris, and is a demographer and sociologist. He studied history and anthropology at Science Po in Paris, received his doctorate in history from Cambridge University and has been working at the Institut national d'études démographiques since 1984. Todd is the author of numerous books. He became world-famous when he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in “La chute finale” (Laffont, Paris) in 1976. In France he is known as a critic of Germany and it’s European politics and a proponent of a Frexit, France’s exit from the European Union. In 2018 his book “Lineages of modernity: a history of humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus” (Polity Press, Cambridge) was published. Todd lives in Paris.