Allan Kardec is the pseudonym of the French teacher and educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (Lyon, October 3, 1804–Paris, March 31, 1869), who is known today as the systematizer of Spiritism.

Rivail was born in Lyon in 1804. Rivail was a disciple and collaborator of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, and a teacher in courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, physiology, comparative anatomy and French in Paris. For one of his research papers, he was inducted in 1831 into the Royal Academy of Arts. He organized and taught free courses for the underprivileged. On February 1832 he married Amélie Gabrielle Boudet.