Charles Robert Richet

Charles Robert Richet (August 25, 1850 – December 4, 1935) was a French physiologist who initially investigated a variety of subjects, such as neuro-chemistry, digestion, thermoregulation in homeothermic animals, and breathing. He was named professor of Physiology at the Collège de France in 1887, and became a member of the Académie de Médecine in 1898. It was however his work on anaphylaxis (his term for the sometimes lethal reaction by a sensitised individual to a second, small-dose injection of an antigen) that won him the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1913. This research helped to elucidate problems such as hay fever, asthma, and other allergic reactions to foreign substances and explained some cases of intoxication and sudden death not previously understood. In 1914, he became a member of the Académie des Sciences.

Charles Richet was a man of many interests, and his works include books about history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, as well as theatre plays and poetry. He pioneered aviation. He also had a deep interest in extra-sensory perception and hypnosis. In 1884, Alexander Aksakov got him interested in the medium Eusapia Palladino. In 1891, Richet founded the Annales des sciences psychiques. He kept in touch with some renowned occultists and spiritist of his time, such as Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Frederic William Henry Myers and Gabriel Delanne. In 1905 he was named president of the Society for Psychical Research in the United Kingdom, and coined the terms Ectoplasm and metapsychics. He experimented with Marthe Béraud, Elisabette D'Espérance, William Eglinton, Stephan Ossowiecki. He became honorary president of the Institut Métapsychique International in Paris in 1919, and full-time president in 1929.

Richet's work on this para-scientific subjects, which dominated his late years, include Traité de Métapsychique ("Treaty of Metapsychics", 1922), Notre Sixième Sens ("Our Sixth Sense", 1928), L'Avenir et la Prémonition ("The Future and Premonition", 1931), La grande espérance ("The Great Hope", 1933).