Short answers, pulled from the story.
Victor Duruy (the 10th of September 1811 - the 25th of November 1894) was a French historian and statesman. He served as Napoleon III's minister of education from 1863 and is known for broad educational reforms, including creating public lecture series, establishing secondary education for girls, and producing major multi-volume histories of Rome and Greece.
Duruy reorganized higher education through enseignement special, established public lecture series called conferences publiques throughout France, introduced a course of secondary education for girls taught by lay teachers, and brought modern history and modern languages into lycee and college curricula. He also proposed making primary education compulsory and free, but failed to win Napoleon III's support.
Duruy played a direct role in the reformation of Galatasaray High School in 1868, shaping it in accordance with his secular educational principles. The school became the first Western-style state higher education institution in the Ottoman Empire.
His most celebrated work is the revised Histoire des Romains depuis les temps les plus recules jusqu'a la mort de Theodose, published in five volumes from 1879 to 1885 and translated into English in six volumes from 1883 to 1886. He also wrote the Histoire des Grecs in three volumes from 1886 to 1891, and served as editor of the Histoire universelle from 1846.
Duruy was elected to the Academie francaise in 1884, succeeding Francois Mignet. He was also elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1886.
Duruy was the son of a Parisian factory worker and studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure under Jules Michelet. He substituted for Michelet at the Ecole Normale in 1836 at age twenty-four, then turned to writing school textbooks after ill health forced him to resign. He held a teaching chair at the College Henri IV in Paris for over a quarter of a century.