
William James
(1842 - 1910)
At different times in William James’ thirty-five-year academic career he served as a professor of physiology, psychology, and philosophy, educating, among others, Theodore Roosevelt, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Gertrude Stein. Fascinated by the “altered states of consciousness” that all religions inspired cross culturally, he experimented with hypnosis and nitrous-oxide intoxication for his famous work The Varieties of Religious Experience.