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Article

Albright, Arthur  

Ana Raquel Fernandes

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

Chemist and phosphorus manufacturer, well known for his philanthropic views, born on 3 March 1811 in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, into a Quaker family. He was the son of William Albright and Rachel Tanner. In 1842 he joined the firm of John and Edward Sturge, manufacturing chemists in Birmingham. He was responsible for the development of Anton Schrotter's (1802–75) method of producing red phosphorus, important for the use of safety matches. This interest grew out of a concern for the health of match workers. In 1854 Albright took over a phosphorus plant previously belonging to the Sturge brothers, in Oldbury, Worcestershire. In 1856 he went into partnership with J. W. Wilson. Their firm survived until the middle of the 20th century.

Throughout his life Albright travelled in Europe Egypt and the United States seeking new sources of raw materials and trying to expand his export trade ...

Article

Galton, Sir Francis  

Peter Fraser

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

Eugenicist and statistician. A cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton's interests in statistics (he founded the science of biostatistics) and genetics led him to the idea that selective breeding to improve the human race would lead to the development of ‘a galaxy of genius’. He first set out these thoughts in an article published in 1865 but at the same time demonstrated that his views on the differences between ‘races’ was conventional: to him Africans were lazy, stupid, and cruel. The basic theory that underlay his political eugenics programme was that, heredity being more important than environment, selective breeding was the only way to improve humanity.

His lasting legacies were his use of statistics and his research into heredity but he is best known for his eugenics programme Though his own interpretation of eugenics tended to be fairly benign focusing on research into hereditary disease or supporting the intelligent ...

Article

Garner, Richard Lynch  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2014

primate dealer and zoologist, was born on 19 February 1848 in Abingdon, Virginia. Garner grew up in a middle-class family shortly before the American Civil War. His family owned several slaves, and sent him to an African-born slave healer and herbalist for treatment as a young boy. During the Civil War, Garner served in the Confederate Army from 1862 to 1865. Once the war ended, Garner completed his secondary education in Blountville, Tennessee. He spent several years wandering in the western territories in the United States, but then returned to Virginia and married Mary Gross in 1872. Garner worked as a teacher and a real estate broker in the 1870s and 1880s, but harbored an ambition to become a well-known scientist despite his lack of a university education.

Garner s interest in Africa came out of his commitment to biological racism and his fascination with monkeys and ...

Article

Johnston, Keith  

James McCarthy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Scottish explorer and geographer of Africa, was born in Edinburgh in 1844. Alexander Keith Johnston was the son of the eminent geographer and cartographer of the same name, who had established the highly respected engraving and mapmaking firm of W. & A. K. Johnston with his brother William. Although the young Keith was educated at prestigious schools in the Scottish capital, he was also tutored carefully by his father, and learned those European languages in which significant geographical material was published. Like his father, Keith’s interest extended well beyond conventional cartography, and he made important contributions to oceanography, hydrology, and global climatic influences. Both were influential figures in the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), itself the most important national institution in the promotion of worldwide discovery and the development of the nineteenth-century British Empire, not least in Africa.

After a period as superintendent of drawing and engraving at the prestigious ...

Article

Latimer, Lewis  

Ian Jones

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

African‐American scientist and inventor who worked in Britain. Lewis Latimer's parents were Rebecca and George Latimer, fugitive slaves from Virginia who gained their liberty in the free state of Massachusetts, where Lewis was born. Lewis served in the American Civil War (1861–5), after which he worked as an office boy in a patent law firm. His employers soon recognized his talent for drawing and made him head draughtsman. He married Mary Wilson (1848–1937) in 1873 and wrote a poem for his wedding, which he later published in his collection Poems of Love and Life.

When he was 25, Lewis invented an improved toilet for railway carriages, and in 1876Alexander Graham Bell hired him to produce the drawings he needed to patent the telephone. Lewis was later headhunted by the US Electric Lighting Company, and in 1882 was awarded a patent for a ...

Article

Lenz, Oskar  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2015

explorer and geographer, was born on 14 September 1848 in Leipzig, then in the German kingdom of Saxony. He was the son of a shoemaker. After graduating from secondary school at the Nicolaigymnasium, he went to the University of Leipzig. In 1870 he earned a degree in geography from this institution. From 1870 to 1873 he taught at a private school in Vienna, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire became his permanent home for the rest of his life. After having joined the Austro-Hungarian civil service and prepared maps on some of its eastern and southern territories for two years, Lenz decided to become an African explorer in 1874 The Deutschen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung Äquatorial Afrikas DAG a German organization dedicated to exploration in central Africa recruited Lenz to visit the French colony of Gabon There Lenz was to travel up the Ogooué River to see if it connected with ...

Article

Rebouças, André  

Aaron Myers

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

The son of national deputy Antônio Pereira Rebouças, André Rebouças was born in Cachoeira, Bahia. After studying math and engineering at Rio De Janeiro's military school, he traveled and studied in Europe. Upon returning to Brazil, he became an adviser and strategist during the Paraguayan War (1864–1870). Rebouças then supervised several engineering projects, including the construction of railroads and docks in Rio de Janeiro. Rebouças's engineering achievements won him the respect of the royal family. He later became a professor of botany and math at the city's Polytechnic School, where he established an abolitionist society in 1883.

Rebouças conducted most of his abolitionist work behind the scenes, rarely addressing audiences. He organized abolitionist meetings and associations, and inspired readers with his antislavery literature and propaganda. Rebouças cofounded the Sociedade brasileira contra a escravidão (Brazilian Antislavery Society) in Rio de Janeiro in 1880 ...

Article

Sampaio, Teodoro Fernandes  

Elizabeth Cooper

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
31 May 2017

was born on 7 January 1855 in Santo Amaro da Purificação, Bahia, Brazil. His mother, Domingas da Paixao do Carmo, was enslaved, and it is believed his father was her master. Although he was born to an enslaved mother, Sampaio lived his life a free man. It is generally thought that his father granted him freedom at birth or shortly thereafter.

Sampaio lived through some of Brazil s greatest historical transformations from a slave society to industrial capitalism and from the imperial era to the Vargas nation state He not only lived through these transformations however but also was at the heart of many of them including designing and overseeing the creation of railroads mapping and surveying the contours and boundaries of the nation designing urban sanitation systems and founding many of Brazil s first historical and geographical institutions Sampaio also anticipated many of the great social problems that Brazil ...

Article

Sidiyya al-Kabir al-Ntishaiʾi  

Charles C. Stewart

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

was born in 1776 CE/AH 1190 into one of the lesser fractions (the Ntishaiʾi) of a southwest Saharan clerical (or zawiya) clan, the Awlad Abyiri. His full name was Sidiyya al-Kabir (“the elder”) b. al-Mukhtar b. al-Hayba al-Ntishai’i.

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the region now known as Mauritania was governed by a loose balance of two types of lineage groups, one that lived largely as predators and another that subsisted as pastoralists. Within the latter group were found nomadic schools in the Islamic disciplines where, judging by the texts studied and written locally, a talented student might advance to levels on a par with advanced education in places like Fez or Cairo.

Sidiyya’s early schooling, consisting initially of his memorization of the entire Qurʾan, would have been conducted under the supervision of his father and uncles, common for youth in the tradition of zawiya tribes like ...