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Founder of a doctrine/religion known as Spiritism or Kardecism.
Allan Kardec was born in Lyon, France in 1804. A disciple and collaborator of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, he spoke several languages, and taugth mathematics, astronomy, physiology, French, physics, chemistry, and comparative anatomy. Rivail was already in his early fifties when he first became interested in the wildly popular phenomenon of spirit-rapping . At the time, strange events attributed to the action of spirits were reported in many different places, most notably in the US and in France, attracting the attention of the high society. The first events were at the best frivoulous and entertaining, featuring objects moving or 'tapping' under what was said to be spiritual control. In some cases, there was a primitive type of communication; the so-said spirits would answer simple questions by controlling the movement of the objects as to pick letters to form words, or just to say 'yes' or 'no'.
At the time, Franz Mesmer's theories on animal magnetism were popular on the upper circles of society. When confronted with the events described above, many scientists (including Rivail and some of his peers) pointed out that the animal magnetism could explain the physical effects observed. At first, Rivail thought that this was a good explanation for what he had heard. However, after seeing personally a demonstration, he quickly dismissed the animal magnetism thesis, as not to be sufficient to totally explain all the facts he observed. Rivail was determined to understand exactly what was the cause behind the physical effects popularly attributed to the spirits.
As an academic with a solid scientific background, Rivail decided to do his own research. Being not a medium, he compiled a list of questions, and started working together with fellow mediums and channelers to ask the spirits about them. Just as he did start to question the spirits, the quality of the communications improved dramatically. In 1857, Rivail (signing as Allan Kardec) published his first book on Spiritism, called The Spirit's Book . It comprised a series of 1018 questions, exploring issues related to the nature of spirits, the spiritual world, and the relationship between the spiritual world and the material world. It was followed by a series of books, the most important one being The Gospel According to Spiritism and by a periodic publication, the Revue Spirite, that Kardec published up to his death.
The name Allan Kardec appeared first when some of the spirits whom Rivail was communicating told him about a previus incarnation where he was a druid with that name. Rivail liked it, and decided upon using it, to keep his work as a spiritualist writer apart from his work as an academic.