include perfumery, chocolate, colours, varnish, automobiles, carpets, &c.
NEUMANN, FRANZ ERNST (1798–1895), German mineralogist,
physicist and mathematician, was born at Joachimstal on the
11th of September 1798. In 1815 he interrupted his studies at
Berlin to serve as a volunteer in the campaign against Napoleon,
and was wounded in the Battle of Ligny. Subsequently he
entered Berlin University as a student of theology, but soon
turned to scientific subjects. His earlier papers were mostly
concerned with crystallography, and the reputation they gained
him led to his appointment as Privatdozent at Königsberg,
where in 1828 he became extraordinary, and in 1829 ordinary,
professor of mineralogy and physics. In 1831, from a study
of the specific heats of compounds, he formulated “Neumann’s
law,” which expressed in modern language runs: “The molecular
heat of a compound is equal to the sum of the atomic
heats of its constituents.” Devoting himself next to optics,
he produced memoirs which entitle him to a high place among
the early searchers after a true dynamical theory of light. In
1832, by the aid of a particular hypothesis as to the constitution
of the ether, he reached by a rigorous dynamical calculation
results agreeing with those obtained by A. L. Cauchy, and
succeeded in deducing laws of double refraction closely resembling
those of A. J. Fresnel; and in subsequent years he attacked
the problem of giving mathematical expression to the conditions
holding for a surface separating two crystalline media, and
worked out from theory the laws of double refraction in strained
crystalline bodies. He also made important contributions to the
mathematical theory of electrodynamics, and in papers published
in 1845 and 1847 established mathematically the laws of the
induction of electric currents. His last publication, which
appeared in 1878, was on spherical harmonics (Beiträge zur
Theorie der Kugelfunctionen). He took part in founding the Mathematisch-Physikalisches
Seminar, to give students a practical
acquaintance with the methods of original research. He retired
from his professorship in 1876, and died at Königsberg on the
23rd of May 1895. His son, Carl Gottfried Neumann (b. 1832), became in 1858 Privatdozent, and in 1863 extraordinary
professor of mathematics at Halle. He was then appointed
to the ordinary chair of mathematics successively at Basel (1863), Tübingen (1865) and Leipzig (1868).
NEUMANN, KARL FRIEDRICH (1793–1870), German
orientalist, was born, under the name of Bamberger, at
Reichsmannsdorf, near Bamberg, on the 28th of December
1793. He studied philosophy and philology at Heidelberg,
Munich and Göttingen, became a convert to Protestantism and
took the name of Neumann. From 1822 to 1825 he was a teacher
at Spires; then he learned Armenian in Venice and visited
Paris and London. In 1829 he went to China, where he studied
the language and amassed a large library of valuable books
and manuscripts. These, about 12,000 in number, he presented
to the royal library at Munich. Returning to Germany in 1831
Neumann was made professor of Armenian and Chinese in the
university of Munich. He held this position until 1852, when,
owing to his pronounced revolutionary opinions, he was removed
from his chair. Ten years later he settled in Berlin, where he
died on the 17th of March 1870.
Neumann's leisure time after his enforced retirement was occupied in historical studies, and besides his Geschichte des englischen Reichs in Asien (Leipzig, 1851), he wrote a history of the United States of America, Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Berlin, 1863-1866). His other works include Versuch einer Geschichte der armenischen Literatur (Leipzig, 1836); Die Völker des südlichen Russland (1846, and again 1855); and Geschichte des englisch-chinesischen Kriegs (1846, and again 1855). He also issued some translations from Chinese and Armenian: Catechism of the Shamans (1831); Vahram’s Chronicle of the Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia (1831) and History of the Pirates in the China Sea (1831). The journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (London, 1871) contains a full list of his works.
NEUMAYR, MELCHIOR (1845–1890), German palaeontologist,
was born at Munich on the 24th of October 1845, the son of
Max von Neumayr, a Bavarian Minister of State. He was
educated in the University of Munich, and completed his studies
at Heidelberg, where he graduated Ph.D. After some experience
in field-geology under C. W. von Gümbel he joined the Austrian
geological survey in 1868. Four years later he returned to
Heidelberg, but in 1873 he was appointed professor of palaeontology
in Vienna, and occupied this post until his death on the
29th of January 1890. His more detailed researches related
to the Jurassic and Cretaceous Ammonites and to the Tertiary
freshwater mollusca; and in these studies he sought to trace
the descent of the species. He dealt also with the zones of
climate during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and endeavoured
to show that the equatorial marine fauna differed
from that of the two temperate zones, and the latter from
that of the arctic zone, much as the faunas of similar zones differ
from each other in the present day; see his “Über klimatische
Zonen während der Jura und Kreidezeit” (Denkschr. K. Akad.
Wiss. Wien, 1883); he was author also of Erdgeschichte (2 vols,
1887); and Die Stämme des Thierreiches (vol. 1 only, 1889).
Obituary by Dr W. T. Blanford in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1890).
NEUMÜNSTER, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, lies on both banks of the small river
Schwale, in the basin of the Stör, 40 m. N. of Altona-Hamburg
by rail, and at the junction of lines to Kiel, Vamdrup (Denmark)
and Tönning. Pop. (1905) 31,347. It has an Evangelical and
a Roman Catholic church and several schools. It is, after
Altona, the most important industrial town in the province, and
contains extensive cloth-factories, besides manufactories of
leather, cotton, wadding, carpets, paper, machinery, beer and
sweetmeats. Its trade is also brisk. The name, which was
originally Wipendorp, is derived from an Augustine monastery,
founded in 1130 by Vicelin, the apostle of Holstein, and is
mentioned as “novum monasterium” in a document of 1136.
Its industrial importance began in the 17th century, when the
cloth-workers of Segeberg, a town to the south-east, migrated
to it. It became a town in 1870.
See Kirmis, Geschichte der Stadt Neumünster (1900); and Dittmann, Aus dem alten Neumünster (1879).
NEUNKIRCHEN, or Ober-Neunkirchen, a town of Germany,
in the Prussian Rhine province, on the Blies, 12 m. N.W. of
Saarbrücken by rail. Pop. (1905) 32,358, consisting almost
equally of Protestants and Roman Catholics. It contains two
Gothic Evangelical and a Romanesque Roman Catholic church,
several schools, and a monument to Freiherr von Stumm (d. 1901),
a former owner of the iron-works here. The principal industrial
establishment is a huge iron-foundry, employing upwards of
4800 hands, and producing about 320,000 tons of pig-iron per
annum; and there are also boiler-works, saw-mills, soap manufactories
and a brewery. Around the town are important
coal mines from which about 212 million tons of coal are raised
annually. The castle built in 1570 was destroyed in 1797, and is
now a ruin. The town is first mentioned in 1280, and became
important industrially during the 18th century.
NEUQUEN, an inland territory of Argentina on the Chilean frontier, between the Colorado and Limay rivers, with the province of Mendoza on the N. and the territory of Rio Negro on the E. and S. Area, 42,345 sq. m. Pop. (1895) 14,517; (1904, estimate) 18,022. The greater part of the territory is mountainous, with fertile, well-watered valleys and valuable forests. The eastern part, however, contains large barren plains, showing some stunted vegetation, and having numerous saline deposits. Long droughts prevail in this region and there is no inducement for settlement, the nomadic Indians visiting it only on their hunting expeditions. Guanacos and Argentine hares are found in abundance in Neuquen, and to a lesser degree the South American ostrich. The Neuquen, which unites with the Limay near the 68th meridian to form the Rio Negro, is the principal river of the territory. The largest of a group of beautiful lakes in the higher Andean valleys is the celebrated Nahuel-Huapi (Lion Grass), which is nearly 50 m. long from E. to W. and about 20 m. from N. to S. at its widest part, and which lies partly in the S.W. angle of the territory, partly in Rio Negro, and partly in the republic of Chile. It is the source of the Rio
