Who is Teilhard de Chardin as noted in the book, The Writing Life?

De Chardin lived in the latter part of the 19th Century and the first half of the 20th. He was a philosopher, priest and like Rahm, a geologist. De Chardin's views occasionally led his writings to be banned, but his belief that the human race is in a perpetual state of evolving towards a more spiritually enlightened state was the forerunner of many contemporary, so called "new age" philosophies.