Deane, Samuel (10 July 1733–12 November 1814), writer and Congregational minister, was born in Dedham, Massachusetts, son of Samuel Deane, a deacon, and Rachel Dwight. His father was a blacksmith and tavern keeper, who in 1745 moved the family to Norton, where he opened a public house. Samuel graduated from Harvard College in 1760 at the advanced age of twenty-seven. Although an excellent scholar, a lover of the classics, and a poet of some ability, he was temporarily expelled in his junior year for “prevaricating with his tutor.” This misfortune did not prevent him from serving as college librarian for a year and tutor for three years after he graduated. He contributed substantially from his small salary to replace books and instruments lost in the college fire of 1764....
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Deane, Samuel (1733-1814), writer and Congregational minister
William Pencak
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Deutsch, Gotthard (1859-1921), Jewish scholar and college professor
C. E. Lindgren
Deutsch, Gotthard (31 January 1859–14 October 1921), Jewish scholar and college professor, was born Eliezer Deutsch in Kanitz (Province of Moravia), Austria, the son of Bernhard L. Deutsch, a merchant, and Elise Wiener. He always called himself Gotthard, an attempted translation into German of his Jewish given name. Deutsch entered Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary in October 1876. While attending seminary classes, he also enrolled in afternoon classes at the University of Breslau. At the seminary, he was influenced by the noted Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz. Matriculating in 1879 at the University of Vienna, two years later he received his Ph.D. in history. While attending the university, he enrolled in a Talmudic course taught by Isaac Hirsch Weiss at Beth Hammidrash. During his studies in Vienna, Deutsch drew inspiration and guidance from both Weiss and Adolf Jellinek, an authority in midrashic research. Shortly after his graduation, Deutsch received Semichah (ordination) from Rabbi Weiss....
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Drucker, Peter Ferdinand (19 November 1909–11 November 2005), author, professor, and management consultant
Alan Deutschman
Drucker, Peter Ferdinand (19 November 1909–11 November 2005), author, professor, and management consultant, was born in Vienna, the elder of two sons of Adolph Drucker, an economist and lawyer who worked as a senior official in Austria-Hungary’s Ministry of Economics, and Caroline Drucker, who had studied medicine. His parents were born Jewish but raised their family as Protestants. They lived in a suburban house, designed by a prominent local architect, that had views of vineyards and the Vienna Woods. Drucker received an informal education at his parents’ frequent dinner parties, which were attended by economists, doctors, mathematicians, philosophers, artists, and musicians (his grandmother had played piano with the Vienna Philharmonic). When Drucker was eight years old, his father introduced him to Sigmund Freud at a Vienna restaurant....
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Duyckinck, George Long (1823-1863), author and editor
David J. Nordloh
Duyckinck, George Long (17 October 1823–30 March 1863), author and editor, was born in New York City, the son of Evert Duyckinck, book publisher, and Harriet June. Duyckinck, whose reputation has been almost eclipsed by that of his older brother, the more outgoing and prolific ...
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Fontaine, William T. V. (2 December 1909–29 December 1968), philosopher and academic
Bruce Kuklick
Fontaine, William T. V. (2 December 1909–29 December 1968), philosopher and academic, was born William Thomas Fontaine in Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of steelmaker William Charles Fontaine and Mary Elizabeth Boyer. He added a second middle name, Valerio, later in life. “Bill” Fontaine was raised in a poor and segregated district of Chester but showed intellectual promise. At sixteen he matriculated at nearby Lincoln University, a historically Black school. He obtained his B.A. in ...
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Heilprin, Michael (1823-1888), writer
Robert Perlman
Heilprin, Michael (23 February 1823–10 May 1888), writer, was born in Piotrkow, Poland, the son of Phineas Mendel Heilprin, a Jewish merchant and Hebrew scholar, and Hannah Lipschitz. He spent his early years in Tomaszow. The atmosphere of the Heilprin home reflected the humanism and rationalism of the Enlightenment and the impact of secular knowledge and liberalism on the hitherto isolated, traditional culture of the Jews of Central Europe....
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Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm (1888-1961), classical scholar and humanist
Robert Renehan
Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm (30 July 1888–19 October 1961), classical scholar and humanist, was born at Lobberich, a small German town in the lower Rhineland, the only child of Lutheran parents, Karl August Jaeger, a textile merchant, and Helene Birschel. One of the giants of twentieth-century classical scholarship, Jaeger, after one semester of study at the University of Marburg (1907), transferred to the University of Berlin at the age of nineteen. At Berlin he studied under some of the most famous classicists of the time, including Hermann Diels and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Jaeger’s dissertation on Aristotle was published in two parts, ...
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Loeb, James (1867-1933), philanthropist and classicist
William M. Calder
Loeb, James (06 August 1867–27 May 1933), philanthropist and classicist, was born in New York City, the son of Solomon Loeb, a banker, and Betty Gallenberg. He was the brother-in-law of Jacob H. Schiff and Paul M. Warburg, whose brother was the art historian Aby Warburg. Loeb learned Greek and Latin at ...
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MacIver, Robert Morrison (1882-1970), social scientist and humanist
John M. Jordan
MacIver, Robert Morrison (17 April 1882–15 June 1970), social scientist and humanist, was born in Stornoway, Scotland, the son of Donald MacIver, a merchant in the Harris tweed trade, and Christine Morrison. As a child he lived with four brothers and a sister on Lewis, the largest island in the Outer Hebrides. The region was noted for its commercial herring fishing, but textiles became more important in the years of MacIver’s youth and helped the family business prosper. He married Ethel Marion Peterkin in 1911; together they raised three children....
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Moulton, Richard Green (5 May 1849–15 Aug. 1924), professor, lecturer, and author
Fred W. Beuttler
Moulton, Richard Green (5 May 1849–15 Aug. 1924), professor, lecturer, and author, was born in Preston, England, the youngest son of James Egan Moulton and Catherine (Fiddian) Moulton. His father was a prominent Methodist minister with four sons, two of whom became ministers: Rev. William Fiddian Moulton, who authored a concordance to the Greek New Testament and was an editor of the Revised Version of the Bible, and Rev. John Egan Moulton, who became a Methodist missionary to Australia. Another brother, James Fletcher Moulton, was a lawyer, judge, scientist, and member of Parliament, with a life peerage as Baron Moulton....
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Neumark, David (1866-1924), rabbi, Jewish philosopher, and Hebraist
Gary P. Zola
Neumark, David (03 August 1866–15 December 1924), rabbi, Jewish philosopher, and Hebraist, was born in Szczerzec, Galicia, the son of Solomon Neumark, a shopkeeper, and Schifrah Scheutz. He received a traditional Jewish education and attended cheder (a communal Jewish elementary school) at a very young age while simultaneously receiving supplemental Hebraic instruction from his father who was himself a learned Jew. When his father died, Neumark’s mother ran the family store on her own so that her seven-year-old son would be able to continue his Jewish education. After finishing ...
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Potter, Charles Francis (1885-1962), Unitarian and later Humanist minister and author
David M. Robinson
Potter, Charles Francis (28 October 1885–04 October 1962), Unitarian and later Humanist minister and author, was born in Marlboro, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Henry Potter, a factory employee, and Flora Ellen Lincoln. Raised in a devout Baptist family, Potter began preaching in Baptist churches while attending Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1907. He assumed a Baptist pastorate in Dover, New Hampshire, in 1908 and moved to another Baptist pastorate in Mattapan, Massachusetts, in 1910. He earned a B.D. (1913) and an S.T.M. (1917) from Newton Theological Seminary and an M.A. from Bucknell (1916). In 1908 he married Clara Cook, and three children were born to their marriage....
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Rabinowitch, Eugene (1901-1973), chemist and scientific activist and popularizer
Martin Fichman
Rabinowitch, Eugene (26 August 1901–15 May 1973), chemist and scientific activist and popularizer, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia; information about his parents is not available. He was a student at the University of St. Petersburg, specializing in chemistry. In 1926 he completed a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Berlin. During this period of his life, he married Anya (surname not known); they had two sons. In 1933 the family left Germany for Copenhagen, where Rabinowitch worked with Niels Bohr at the Institute of Theoretical Physics. He later studied at University College, London. He brought his family to the United States in 1938 so that he could take part in a solar energy research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1942 Rabinowitch joined the Metallurgical Project of the Manhattan Engineer District at the University of Chicago, known as the “Met Lab,” where he was a senior chemist and a section chief on the Manhattan Project. The main task of the Met Lab was to develop procedures for the large-scale production of plutonium. Work on “weapons theory”—that is, on theoretical aspects of bomb construction—was transferred to Los Alamos in early 1943; thus Met Lab scientists played a relatively minor part in the final stages of the Manhattan Project (which would result in the successful production of the atomic bombs used against Japan in 1945)....
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Reese, Curtis Williford (1887-1961), Unitarian minister and religious Humanist
David M. Robinson
Reese, Curtis Williford (03 September 1887–05 June 1961), Unitarian minister and religious Humanist, was born in Madison County, North Carolina, the son of Patterson Reese and Rachel Elizabeth Buckner. Reese was raised in a devoutly Southern Baptist family, and after graduating from Mars Hill College in North Carolina, he entered the Baptist ministry in Bellwood, Alabama, in 1908. After a brief stint of supply preaching there, he entered the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville in 1908, meanwhile holding pastorates at Gratz and Pleasant Home, Kentucky....
