Jacques Eliacin François Marie Paganel is one of the main characters in Jules Verne's 1867-68 novel In Search of the Castaways (original title Les Enfants du capitaine Grant).

[citation needed] Verne gives a memorable characterisation of his hero: He was a tall, thin, withered-looking man, about forty years of age, and resembled a long nail with a big head.

It was evident from his physiognomy that he was a lively, intelligent man; he had not the crabbed expression of those grave individuals who never laugh on principle, and cover their emptiness with a mask of seriousness.

His pantaloons and jacket were of brown velvet, and their innumerable pockets were stuffed with note-books, memorandum-books, account-books, pocket-books, and a thousand other things equally cumbersome and useless, not to mention a telescope in addition, which he carried in a shoulder-belt.In the novel, Paganel is the "Secretary of the Geographical Society of Paris, Corresponding Member of the Societies of Berlin, Bombay, Darmstadt, Leipsic, London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and New York; Honorary Member of the Royal Geographical and Ethnographical Institute of the East Indies"[1].

After many years of being a cabinet professor, he decides to take a voyage to India, but by mistake boards the protagonists' yacht Duncan (which is going to Patagonia), the first of Paganel's absent-minded actions.