BROGA, Paul-Pierre. - French surgeon, naturalist, and anthropologist, b. at Ste-Foy-la-Grande on 28 June 1824, d. in Paris on 9 July 1880. In 1859 he founded the Société d'Anthropologie and in 1876 the École d'Anthropologie. An evolutionist and agnostic, he left behind a vigorous lecture from 1870 "On Transformism" in which he demonstrates that the so-called theory of organic evolution is essentially a philosophical interpretation that agnosticism is compelled to give of the origin of living beings, and not a doctrine arrived at by induction.
BIBL.: P. Broca, Revue des cours scientifiques, 34 (1870), pp. 230 ff.; id., Mémoires d'Anthropologie, III, Paris 1877, pp. 141 ff.