Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/499

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GKEGOKOVIUS


LAVERAN


writes on social questions. His Ration alist views are given in The New Morality (1902) and \Tlne Religion of Kindness (1916).

GREGOROYIUS, Ferdinand, German poet and historian. B. Jan. 19, 1821. Ed. Konigsberg University. He was trained in philosophy and theology, but at the close of his academic course he turned to poetry and history. After a few unsuc cessful literary works, he won attention by his Goethe s Wilhelm Meister (1849), one of the best studies of Goethe at the time, and his works on Polish and Magyar literature. In 1851 his Tod des Tiberius and Gcschichte des romischen Kaiser Hadrian, two very learned studies of ancient Roman life, opened his series of fine works on Italy. He spent many years in Italy, and travelled a good deal in Greece, Syria, and Egypt. Corsica (2 vols., 1854), Wanderjahre in Italian (5 vols.), and other works, gave instalments of his industrious research ; but his high repute rests chiefly on his Geschichte der Stadt Bom im Mittelalter (8 vols., 1859-73), a vivid and. critical history of the Rome of Papal days that has never been supei seded. The municipality of Rome, after the dis placement of the Papacy, undertook the publication of an Italian translation of it (8 vols., 1874-76), and it has appeared in English and other languages. Gregorovius was enrolled as an honorary citizen of Rome. His Lucrezia Borgia (2 vols., 1874) is the standard work on the Pope s daughter, and partly redeems her character. His history of Athens (Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, 2 vols., 1889) is not so successful. Gregorovius edited the letters of Alexander von Humboldt, and the complete list of his own works, all of which are characterized by most laborious research, is very lengthy. He was a liberal Theist. Baroness von Suttner tells us that he once wrote in her album : " Priests place themselves between man and the Deity only as shadows" (Memoirs, i, 67). D. May 1, 1891.

925


"HEDDERWICK, John Allan." See- WHYTE, ADAM GOWANS.

LAUBEUF, Maxime Alfred, French engineer and inventor of the submarine. B. Nov. 23, 1864. Ed. College Chaptal and Ecole Polytechnique, Paris. In 1885 he entered the Navy as an engineering pupil. He became an engineer of the first class in 1889, and chief engineer in 1905, retiring in 1906 to devote himself to- invention. In 1900 and 1908 Laubeuf won special prizes for mechanics from the Academy of Sciences, of which he is a member, and he has discharged a number of Government missions abroad. He is regarded in France (and described in the French Qui est-ce ?} as the creator of the submersible submarine. He constructed the first boat of the type, the Narval, in 1898, and has since built a large number for the French Navy. He made a remark able forecast of naval war in his Luttes maritimes prochaines (1908). M. Laubeuf is a chevalier of the Legion of Honour and an officer of the Academy, and he has had a number of orders conferred on him. | He is an Agnostic. Commenting recently on Spiritualism (in Le Gaulois, Oct. 5, 1920), he said : " As to another world, I must declare myself unable to say any thing, though it would, perhaps, be unphilo- sophical to deny everything a priori."

LAYERAN, Professor Charles Louis Alphonse, French physician. B. June 18, 1845. Ed. Strassburg University. He was for some time associate professor at Val de Grace, then professor at the School of Hygiene ; and he is now professor at the Pasteur Institute, and one of the highest medical authorities in Paris. He received the Nobel Prize for medical research in 1907, and is an Officer of the Legion of Honour and a member of the Institute and the Academy of Medicine. Professor Laveran has done very valuable work on the propagation of fever by mosquitoes, the blood corpuscles, etc. Interviewed recently in regard to Edison s 926