Émile Boirac
Émile Boirac was a French philosopher, parapsychologist, promoter of Esperanto and writer.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 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, and subsequently in Boirac's book L'Avenir des Sciences Psychiques, where he also proposed the term "metagnomy" as a more precise description for what was, then, commonly known as clairvoyance.
He was one of a group that conducted experiments on the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. 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.
Boirac died in Dijon in 1917.
