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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Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm (1888-1961), classical scholar and humanist
Robert Renehan
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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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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....
