Jaime Jaramillo Uribe was born in 1917 in Abejorral, Antioquia, and died on October 25, 2015.
He was the most important historian of Colombia, and is considered as the “father of the new history in Colombia “.
Mr. Uribe founded the department of history at the National University of Colombia and the Colombian Yearbook of Social History and Culture in 1963.
He was also director of the magazine Reason and Fable of University of the Andes, and scientific director of Manual of History of Colombia (Colcultura 1978 to 1980).
Jaime Jaramilo grew up in Pereira, where he finished primary school, and after the death of his parents, he moved to Bogota to finish his high school studies.
Jaime enrolled at the Central Normal School, where he received his master in 1937.
Jaime hesitated between studying law or medicine, a conference of the director of the Escuela Normal Superior, Professor Jose Francisco Socarrás convinced him to enter the Ecole Normale, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Social Sciences in 1941.
His teaching career began at the Nicolas Esguerra College and Normal School, where he was the professor of Sociology from 1942 to 1946.
He studied as much right in the Externado of Colombia and the Free University, he when to to France to complete courses in sociology and history at the University of Paris, Sorbonne.
In 1952, Jaime married the anthropologist Yolanda Mora, he joined the Institute of Philosophy of the National University.
There he received the invitation to participate in a general history of ideas in Latin America that is prepared in Mexico, and he began writing “The Colombian thought in the nineteenth century”, which ended in 1954 in Hamburg, where he was a visiting professor at the College. He wrote many books.
In this city, in addition, their first child was born, the painter Lorenzo Jaramillo.
He returned to Colombia in 1957, linked to the National University, of which he was Secretary General from 1958 to 1960.
In 1959 was born his second daughter, the actress Rosario Jaramillo.
In 1960 he returned to the Faculty of Arts as a professor history, and there made an important and influential work, he became the chief counselor of a fundamental transformation in the orientation of the Colombian historiography, which led to the formation of the called “new history”.
In 1971 Jaramillo withdrew from the National University and joined the University of the Andes, where he was dean of the Faculty of Arts and professor at the Centre for Economic Development Studies (CEDE) and the Department of History, for over thirty years.
His work places special emphasis on studies of the history of ideas in Colombia, as well as analysis of various aspects of social history: the relationships between ethnic groups, craft and education organizations.
His work shows the influence of sociologists and social historians and culture, as Ernst Cassirer, Max Weber, Jakob Burckhardt and the French historian Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel.
Uribe research earned him the Order of Boyacá in 1993 and two doctorates “honoris causa” of the National University of Colombia and Universidad de los Andes.
Jaime passed away at age 98 in October 2015.