Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/311

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NELSON


teacher of Italian literature at the Normal School Gaetana Agnesi at Milan, and was awarded the annuity of the Giannini Milli Fund. In 1896 she married Garlanda, a merchant, and gave up the annuity. Signora Negri-Garlanda is a Socialist, and, like all the Italian Socialists, a Eationalist. See P. Papa s Ada Negri e la sua poesia (1893).

NELSON, GustaY, M.D., American physician and writer. B. July 30, 1863. Ed. Copenhagen Latin Academy and Uni versity. Nelson adopted advanced ideas at the university and contributed to the press. He took a commission in the Danish army, but his activity in the political field brought trouble upon him, and he emigrated to America. In 1890 he joined the staff of the Truthseeker, and wrote in that journal. Meantime he studied medicine, graduated, and began to practise. Nelson, who is a Materialist, reads eight languages, and is a man of wide erudition. He was a member of the Freethought Federation of America.

NEUMANN, Carl, German writer. B. Jan. 19, 1871. Neumann is the editor of Eeclam s " Universal Bibliothek," one of the most useful and extensive series of popular editions in Germany. He is a Monist, and a great admirer of Professor Haeckel ; and he is also an authority on ornithology. He edited Haeckel s Natur und Mensch in Eeclam s series, and he has written a biographical sketch of the Monist leader (Ernst Haeckel, 1905). In this, and in the Haeckel Memorial Volume (Was Wir E. Haeckel Verdanken, 1914), he expresses the highest appreciation of the master and complete adherence to his teaching.

NEYINSON, Henry W., writer. Ed. Shrewsbury School and Oxford (Christ s Church). Nevinson took to journalism, and joined the staff of the Daily Chronicle. He was its correspondent in the Grseco- Turkish War in 1897, in Spain in 1898, and in the South African War from 1899 to 1902. In 1904-1905 he visited Central 549


Africa, and on his return he exposed the Portuguese traffic in slaves. His fearless pen rendered a similar service after a visit to Eussia in 1905-1906, and he visited India for the Manchester Guardian in 1907- 1908. He had left the Chronicle in 1903, and he was on the staff of the Daily News in 1908 and 1909. Since 1906 he has been on the staff of the Nation, and he writes for the Daily Herald. Of his many works his Essays in Eebellion (1913) best ex pounds his opinions. In ch. xxxv he examines Maeterlinck s La Mort, and pro nounces himself Agnostic: " I do not know.

Talk of that kind rests on no sounder

basis than the old assertions about the houris and the happy hunting-grounds " (p. 313). He is not less outspoken in his Conway Memorial Lecture, Peace and War in the Balance (1911), which reflects his fiery idealism.

NEWCOMB, Professor Simon, Ameri can astronomer. B. (Canada) Mar. 12, 1835. Ed. in his father s school, Nova Scotia, and Harvard. He passed to the United States in 1853, and became a teacher. In 1857 he was appointed com puter to the Nautical Almanac, and it was after that date that he studied at Harvard, graduating there in 1858. After three years further study he was nominated professor of mathematics to the U. S. Navy. From 1871 to 1874 he was secretary of the Transit of Venus Commission, and directed several Eclipse Expeditions. In 1877 he was appointed senior professor in the Navy and director of the Nautical Almanac ; and from 1884 to 1894 he was professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. For many years Newcomb edited the American Journal of Mathe matics, and he is regarded as one of the greatest of the early American astronomers. He had the Gold Medal of the Eoyal Astronomical Society (1874), the Copley Medal of the Eoyal Society (1890), and the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific ; he was associate of the French Institute, Commander of the 550