Charles Richet

1850-1935

          VERY DISTINGUISHED French physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1913 for his discovery of anaphylaxis. Professor of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, member of the medicine and Academy of Science and Honorary president of the Paris-based Institut Métapsychique International in 1919. Richet's insatiable curiosity also led him to explore other fields outside medicine, and with as much of passion. Indeed, he was at the same time a novelist, poet, playwright, sociologist and even pioneer of aviation!

Extensively investigated a wide range of phenomena such as telepathy, hypnosis, psychokinesis and ectoplasm (a term first coined by Richet), which he whole-heartedly accepted as real but could only interpret them in a materialistic manner.

He founded the Annales des Sciences Psychiques in 1890 (the first issue appeared in 1891), whose title subsequently changed to Revue Métapsychique in 1920. He worked with colleagues of different nationalities including Gustave Geley, Oliver Lodge and Baron von Schrenck-Notzing and with various mediums, including Mrs. Piper, Eusapia Palladino and Marthe Béraud. He summed up his general conclusions in Thirty Years of Psychical Research, which was translated to English in 1923 by Stanley de Brath.

Source (with minor modifications): An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor (1934).

Articles by Charles Richet on this website:

Various Reflections on the Sixth Sense

General Conclusions on the Sixth Sense

Mediums and Metapsychics