Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/56

 AYRTON, Professor William Edward, B.A., F.R.S., physicist and engineer. B. Sep. 14, 1847. Ed. University College School and University College (London), where he won the Andrews mathematical scholarship. In 1868 he passed the examination of the Indian telegraphic service, and was sent to study under Lord Kelvin at Glasgow. He was one of Kelvin's most brilliant pupils. From 1868 to 1873 he practised in India, and in the latter year he accepted the chair of physics at the Imperial Engineering College, Tokyo. Returning to England in 1878, he taught in succession at the City and Guilds of London Institute (1879-81), the Finsbury Technical College (1881-84), and the Central Technical College (1884-1908). Professor Ayrton made many discoveries, and was one of the first to advocate the transmission of power from generating stations. He was a man of great energy and integrity, and had, as his colleague Professor Perry says, " a keen sense of justice, a high regard for truth, and noble ideals" (Nature, Nov. 19, 1908). He was an Agnostic, and had a secular burial. D. Nov. 8, 1908.

BABEUF, Francois Noel, French economist. B. Nov. 23, 1764. Left an orphan at sixteen, Babeuf earned his living as a clerk, then as a secretary, and worked hard at social and economic questions. He was a single-taxer, and had other views which attracted notice. At the outbreak of the Revolution he took the pen-name of " Caius Gracchus," and edited a series of ephemeral papers advocating complete equality. He was an Atheist, and was the founder of the Société des Égaux. Condemned to death for plotting against the Directorate, he committed suicide in court May 27, 1797.

BACCELLI, Professor Guido, Italian statesman. B. Nov. 25, 1832. Ed. Rome University. In 1856 he was appointed professor of medical jurisprudence and, later, of pathological anatomy at Rome University. In 1863 he became Director of the Roman General Medical Clinic. After the fall of the Papacy he entered the Camera (1874) and sat with the Anti-Clericals. He was four times Minister of Public Instruction, and to him is mainly due the reorganization of Italian education, which the Popes had left in a disgraceful state. In spite of the clamours of the clergy, he appointed [] to the chair of philosophy at Padua. In 1890 he became Senator and President of the Superior Medical Council. From 1901 to 1903 he was Minister of Agriculture. Baccelli, who held the Grand Cordon of the Crown of Italy and was an Honorary Associate of the London Medical Society, was a prominent Freemason and fearless Rationalist. D. Jan. 10, 1916.

BAGE, Robert, novelist. B. Feb. 29, 1728. Ed. Derby. He knew Latin well at the age of seven, and, though he was early put to his father's business of paper-making and became himself a prosperous manufacturer, he continued to study industriously. For four years (1775-79) he was a partner with Erasmus Darwin in a large iron enterprise. It failed, and to divert his mind from his losses he took to writing novels as a means of propagating his views. The first, Mount Henneth (1781), was not successful, but his later stories had a high reputation, and were in some cases translated into German. He had quitted the Society of Friends for Deism. His pious and intimate friend Hutton puts it that Bage "laid no stress upon revelation " and was "barely a Chris tian" (Chalmers's Biog. Dict.). D. Sep. 1, 1801.

BAGEHOT, Walter, M.A., economist. B. Feb. 3, 1826. Ed. Bristol and London University College, where he won the gold medal in philosophy and political economy. He was called to the bar in 1852, but he preferred to join his father in a banking business, and he became one of the leading authorities on financial