Short answers, pulled from the story.
Louis Pierre Althusser was born on the 16th of October 1918 in Birmendreïs, a small town near Algiers in French Algeria. His family belonged to the pied-noir community, descendants of European settlers who had lived in North Africa for generations.
Althusser spent five years imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp located in Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany from June 1940 until after the war ended. During his captivity, he read philosophy and literature which fundamentally altered his intellectual trajectory and led him to first understand communism through discussions with other prisoners.
On the 16th of November 1980, Louis Althusser strangled his wife Hélène Rytmann within their ENS room while suffering from an acute melancholy crisis. A February 1981 court ruled mental irresponsibility preventing prosecution while confinement warrant issued by Paris police prefecture mandated retirement from ENS.
Louis Althusser published Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses in La Pensée journal in 1970. This essay established his theory of how society constructs individuals as subjects through ideological state apparatuses including family, media, religious organizations, and the education system.
Louis Althusser died on the 22nd of October 1990 following a heart attack contracted during pneumonia treatment at the MGEN institution La Verrière. He had been hospitalized since early 1983 after strangling his wife and spent most of his final years in psychiatric clinics under constant medical supervision.