Henri Breuil

Henri Breuil was a French Catholic priest, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist. He devoted much of his life to studying examples of prehistoric art in Europe, Africa and Asia. He was a pioneer in the field of Paleolithic art and developed a system of classification and chronology for the Ice Age objects. He also proposed a theory of "sympathetic magic" to explain the significance of these objects. He taught at the University of Fribourg, the Institute of Human Paleontology, Paris and the Collège de France. He was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1924 and became a member of the Institut de France in 1938. He was a man of deep religious faith and learning. He died in 1961 at the age of 84.