Émile Boirac

Émile Boirac (26 August 1851 – 20 September 1917) was a French philosopher, parapsychologist, promoter of Esperanto and writer.

Émile Boirac in 1917

Biography

Boirac was born in Guelma, Algeria. He became president of the University of Grenoble in 1898, and in 1902 president of Dijon University. A notable advocate for the universal language, Esperanto, he presided over its 1st Universal Congress (Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France, 7 August to 12 August 1905) and directed the Academy of Esperanto.

He was one of the first to use the term "déjà vu", where it appeared in a letter to the editor of Revue philosophique in 1876,^[1] and subsequently in Boirac's book L'Avenir des Sciences Psychiques, where he also proposed the term "metagnomy" ("knowledge of things situated beyond those we can normally know") as a more precise description for what was, then, commonly known as clairvoyance.^[2]

He was one of a group that conducted experiments on the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino.^[3] He also investigated animal magnetism, and various hypnotic phenomena such as the induction of sleep, "transposition of senses", "magnetic rapport", "exteriorisation of sensitiveness", "exteriorisation of motor nerve force" etc.^[4]

Boirac died in Dijon in 1917.

See also

• Paul Joire
• Albert de Rochas
• Joseph Grasset