George Nugent Merle Tyrrell (23 March 1879 – 29 October 1952), best known as G. N. M. Tyrrell, was a British mathematician,

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

, radio engineer and parapsychologist.

Biography

Tyrrell was born in Frome,

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

to Nugent and Margery Tyrrell. His father was a civil engineer, and his grandfather, George Nugent Tyrrell, was the first "Superintendent of the Line" for the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

. Tyrrell was a student of

Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquess of Marconi ( ; ; 25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937) was an Italian electrical engineer, inventor, and politician known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based Wireless telegraphy, wireless tel ...

and a pioneer in the development of radio. In 1908 he joined the

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...

. He conducted numerous experiments in

telepathy Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic ...

and was interested in

apparitional experience In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception. In academic discus ...

s. He attempted to explain

ghost In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...

s by a psychological theory. Tyrrell proposed that ghosts are a

hallucination A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the compelling sense of reality. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming ( REM sleep), which does not involve wakefulness; pse ...

of the subconscious mind of a person, to explain collective hallucinations for more than one person, he proposed it as a telepathic mechanism. Tyrrell was the president of the Society for Psychical Research 1945-1946. Although a believer in telepathy, Tyrrell was a critic of physical

mediumship Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or ghost, spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or ...

. He stated that it has been the "happy hunting ground of tricksters and charlatans." Tyrrell created the term

out-of-body experience An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world as if from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more common ...

in his book ''Apparitions.'' A review in ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'' for ''Science and Psychical Phenomena'' praised Tyrrell for his "obvious sincerity" but suggested the book was "full of flaws" which aroused suspicion of Tyrrell's critical faculties.

Published works

* Grades of Significance (1931) * ''Science and Psychical Phenomena'' (1938) * ''Apparitions'' (1943)
''The Personality of Man''
(1946)Finger, Frank. (1948). ''Reviewed Work: The Personality of Man: New Facts and Their Significance by G. N. M. Tyrrell''. ''

The Quarterly Review of Biology ''The Quarterly Review of Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. It was established in 1926 by Raymond Pearl. In the 1960s it was purchased by the Stony Brook Foundation when the editor H. Bentley Glass ...

'' 23 (1): 93-93. * ''Homo Faber: A Study of Man's Mental Evolution'' (1951) * ''Man the Maker: A Study of Man's Mental Evolution'' (1952)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tyrrell, George Nugent Merle 1879 births 1952 deaths British physicists British parapsychologists People from Frome

Biography

Published works

See also

References