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 LAING

LAMAECK

Grasserie is a very learned, versatile, and prolific writer.

LAING, Samuel, writer and man of business. B. Dec. 12, 1812. Ed. private tutor and Cambridge (St. John s). In 1834 he became a fellow of St. John s, and he was admitted to the Bar (Lincoln s Inn) in 1837 ; but he accepted a secretaryship to Lord Taunton and entered the business world. In 1843 he was appointed secretary to the railway department of the Board of Trade, and he was chiefly responsible for the adoption of a uniform cheap fare. He was a member of the Eailway Commission in 1845, Chairman and Managing Director of the L. B. and S. C. Eailway from 1848 to 1855, Chairman of the Crystal Palace Company from 1852 to 1855, Member of Parliament from 1852 to 1885, financial secretary to the Treasury in 1859, Finan cial Minister in India in 1860, and again Chairman of the Brighton Eailway from 1867 to 1894. Laing wrote his well-known Eationalist summaries of science (Modern Science and Modern Thought, 1885, etc.) in his later years. He was an Agnostic. D. Aug. 6, 1897.

LAISANT, Professor Charles Ange,

D. es Sc., French mathematician. B. Nov. 1, 1841. Ed. Ecole Polytechnique. He served for some years in the army as an engineer, and became a captain. In 1879 he was appointed editor of the Petit Parisien, but he was chiefly devoted to mathematics, on which he wrote a number of important works. In 1887-88 he was President of the Mathematical Society of France, and in 1903-1904 President of the French Asso ciation for the Advancement of Science. He is an Officer of the Legion of Honour, and Vice-President of the Astronomical Society and the National Society for the Promotion of the Education of Youth. Professor Laisant is an active Eationalist and Agnostic.

LAKANAL, Joseph, French statesman. B. July 14, 1762. He studied for the 415

priesthood, and became professor of philo sophy in the Church, but he abandoned his orders and religion at the Eevolution. As a member of the Convention (1792-95) he was largely responsible for the great educa tional reforms it carried and the founding of the Ecole Normale and the Institut. Proscribed in 1814, he retired to America, where he had a very generous reception, Congress voting him 500 acres of land. He became President of the University of Louisiana, but returned to France in 1830. D. Feb. 14, 1845.

LALANDE, Joseph Jerome le Fran- cais de, French astronomer. B. July J 1, 1732. Ed. Jesuit College, Lyons, and Paris. Lalande an adopted name, his natal name being Le Fra^ais made such progress in astronomy that at the age of nineteen he was sent by the Academy of Sciences on a mission to Berlin, where he met Voltaire and other Eationalists. He joined the staff of the Paris Observatory in 1752, and was admitted to the Academy in 1753. He became professor of astro nomy at the College de France in 1761, and Director of the Observatory in 1765. Although he was an Atheist, he risked his life by sheltering priests at the Observatory in 1794. The chief of his many important works was his Traite d astronomie (2 vols., 1764), which inspired Dupuis with his solar-myth speculations. Lalande also inspired Marechal s Dictionnaire des athees (1800) and wrote supplements to it. He was in the front rank of the brilliant French astronomers and mathematicians of the time, and a zealous Atheist. D. Apr. 4, 1807.

LAMARCK, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de, French naturalist. B. Aug. 1, 1744. Ed. Jesuit College, Amiens. Destined for a clerical career, he ran away from school and joined the army, and, on being disabled, devoted himself to botany at Paris. His Flore Franqaise (1778) gave him a high reputation, and he was admitted to the Academy in 1779. 416