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IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine): Fonds Gustave Le Bon, 851GLB

Visit: 2026-10-08. Found via Google "fonds Gustave Le Bon" OR "archives de Gustave Le Bon" laboratoire rue Vignon physique (the Google AI summary pointed to IMEC; the claim was then checked on IMEC's own page in Chrome, since the page is rendered by script). URL: https://www.imec-archives.com/archives/fonds/851GLB [web]

Found

  • Title: "Le Bon, Gustave (1841-1931)".
  • Content description (quoted): "Le fonds confié par Sylvie Carnot comporte les carnets, des articles et manuscrits, des récits de voyage, une documentation scientifique, des dossiers biographiques, une correspondance, des dossiers en lien avec son activité éditoriale chez Flammarion, des photographies, des épreuves corrigées, ses livres publiés."
  • IMEC's description of Le Bon: close friend of Bergson, Valéry, Poincaré, Saint-Saëns and the comtesse Greffulhe; director of the "Bibliothèque de philosophie scientifique" at Flammarion. IMEC also states, as its own characterization, that his work was controversial in his own time, for method and for craniology and racial and sexual hierarchies.
  • Location: Abbaye d'Ardenne, 14280 Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe (near Caen); consultation by appointment; the finding aid ("fiche et plan de classement") is on IMEC's collections portal (not reached).

Bearing on the claims

  • Claim 5 and the 1990 review's statement that "All records of Professor Le Bon have been stricken" and "his books removed from all worthy libraries": a public French archive holds his papers, including "une documentation scientifique" and correspondence. This is the record that would show his laboratory notes, plates and letters on black light and intra-atomic energy (absence-of-evidence analysis: the papers exist and are open to researchers, so the gap is one of access, not destruction).
  • Links: the Carnot family appears twice (Sylvie Carnot, donor; a Poincaré letter in "la collection de Pierre-Sadi Carnot", Poincaré Papers 2-35-3), suggesting part of Le Bon's correspondence descended through that family.
  • Next step: read the IMEC finding aid for physics files (black light, 1896-1910; assistant; laboratory at 29 rue Vignon; Revue scientifique memoirs; Moray or American correspondence, if any).