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Robert A. McConnell
Scientists & Researchers
Person
Robert A. McConnell (1914-2006) was a physicist in Pittsburgh who sent Wolfgang Pauli his work on extrasensory perception in 1950 and corresponded with him about ESP experiments in 1954. 1914-04-06 2006-07-31 Pennsylvania, USA 2026-10-15

Robert A. McConnell was a physicist who authored the paper "ESP - Fact or Fancy?" His work was discussed by Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli and psychiatrist Carl Jung, who had a lively conversation about Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis in the early 1950s1.

Jung remarked on how some age-old mysteries never change, and that attempts to explain away seemingly miraculous results often fail against the facts. McConnell's paper contributed to the ongoing debate about the reality and nature of anomalous mental phenomena1.

Correspondence with Pauli

The archive of Pauli's papers at CERN holds three letters between McConnell and Pauli. McConnell wrote from Pittsburgh on September 28, 1950, sending a reprint on ESP and mentioning his work on psychokinetic effects.2 Pauli wrote to McConnell on October 14, 1954, and according to the archive's description referred to the ideas of G. D. Wassermann on "mental patterns", which resemble Jung's archetypes, and asked McConnell a specific question about ESP experiments.3 McConnell replied on October 22, 1954, giving Wassermann's address in England and answering the question about the tests.4

Footnotes

  1. Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎

  2. CERN Archives, Pauli Archive, Letter-1155, Letter from McConnell to Pauli, September 28, 1950, https://archives.cern.ch/index.php/letter-1155. ↩︎

  3. CERN Archives, Pauli Archive, Letter-1892, Letter from Pauli to McConnell, October 14, 1954, CERN-ARCH-PMC-06-255, https://archives.cern.ch/index.php/letter-1892. ↩︎

  4. CERN Archives, Pauli Archive, Letter-1898, Letter from McConnell to Pauli, October 22, 1954, https://archives.cern.ch/index.php/letter-1898. ↩︎