Maurice Halbwachs (French: [mɔʁis albvaks]; 11 March 1877 – 16 March 1945) was a French philosopher and sociologist known for developing the concept of collective memory. Halbwachs also contributed to the sociology of knowledge with his La Topographie Legendaire des Évangiles en Terre Sainte, a study of the spatial infrastructure of the New Testament (1951).