Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/444

 include perfumery, chocolate, colours, varnish, automobiles, carpets, &c.

 NEUMANN, FRANZ ERNST (1798–1895), German mineralogist, physicist and mathematician, was born at Joachimstal on the 11th of September 1798. In 1815 he interrupted his studies at Berlin to serve as a volunteer in the campaign against Napoleon, and was wounded in the Battle of Ligny. Subsequently he entered Berlin University as a student of theology, but soon turned to scientific subjects. His earlier papers were mostly concerned with crystallography, and the reputation they gained him led to his appointment as Privatdozent at Königsberg, where in 1828 he became extraordinary, and in 1829 ordinary, professor of mineralogy and physics. In 1831, from a study of the specific heats of compounds, he formulated “Neumann’s law,” which expressed in modern language runs: “The molecular heat of a compound is equal to the sum of the atomic heats of its constituents.” Devoting himself next to optics, he produced memoirs which entitle him to a high place among the early searchers after a true dynamical theory of light. In 1832, by the aid of a particular hypothesis as to the constitution of the ether, he reached by a rigorous dynamical calculation results agreeing with those obtained by A. L. Cauchy, and succeeded in deducing laws of double refraction closely resembling those of A. J. Fresnel; and in subsequent years he attacked the problem of giving mathematical expression to the conditions holding for a surface separating two crystalline media, and worked out from theory the laws of double refraction in strained crystalline bodies. He also made important contributions to the mathematical theory of electrodynamics, and in papers published in 1845 and 1847 established mathematically the laws of the induction of electric currents. His last publication, which appeared in 1878, was on spherical harmonics (Beiträge zur Theorie der Kugelfunctionen). He took part in founding the Mathematisch-Physikalisches Seminar, to give students a practical acquaintance with the methods of original research. He retired from his professorship in 1876, and died at Königsberg on the 23rd of May 1895. His son, (b. 1832), became in 1858 Privatdozent, and in 1863 extraordinary professor of mathematics at Halle. He was then appointed to the ordinary chair of mathematics successively at Basel (1863), Tübingen (1865) and Leipzig (1868).

NEUMANN, KARL FRIEDRICH (1793–1870), German orientalist, was born, under the name of Bamberger, at Reichsmannsdorf, near Bamberg, on the 28th of December 1793. He studied philosophy and philology at Heidelberg, Munich and Göttingen, became a convert to Protestantism and took the name of Neumann. From 1822 to 1825 he was a teacher at Spires; then he learned Armenian in Venice and visited Paris and London. In 1829 he went to China, where he studied the language and amassed a large library of valuable books and manuscripts. These, about 12,000 in number, he presented to the royal library at Munich. Returning to Germany in 1831 Neumann was made professor of Armenian and Chinese in the university of Munich. He held this position until 1852, when, owing to his pronounced revolutionary opinions, he was removed from his chair. Ten years later he settled in Berlin, where he died on the 17th of March 1870.

NEUMAYR, MELCHIOR (1845–1890), German palaeontologist, was born at Munich on the 24th of October 1845, the son of Max von Neumayr, a Bavarian Minister of State. He was educated in the University of Munich, and completed his studies at Heidelberg, where he graduated Ph.D. After some experience in field-geology under C. W. von Gümbel he joined the Austrian geological survey in 1868. Four years later he returned to Heidelberg, but in 1873 he was appointed professor of palaeontology in Vienna, and occupied this post until his death on the 29th of January 1890. His more detailed researches related to the Jurassic and Cretaceous Ammonites and to the Tertiary freshwater mollusca; and in these studies he sought to trace the descent of the species. He dealt also with the zones of climate during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and endeavoured to show that the equatorial marine fauna differed from that of the two temperate zones, and the latter from that of the arctic zone, much as the faunas of similar zones differ from each other in the present day; see his “Über klimatische Zonen während der Jura und Kreidezeit” (Denkschr. K. Akad.  Wiss. Wien, 1883); he was author also of Erdgeschichte (2 vols, 1887); and Die Stämme des Thierreiches (vol. 1 only, 1889).

 NEUMÜNSTER, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, lies on both banks of the small river Schwale, in the basin of the Stör, 40 m. N. of Altona-Hamburg by rail, and at the junction of lines to Kiel, Vamdrup (Denmark) and Tönning. Pop. (1905) 31,347. It has an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church and several schools. It is, after Altona, the most important industrial town in the province, and contains extensive cloth-factories, besides manufactories of leather, cotton, wadding, carpets, paper, machinery, beer and sweetmeats. Its trade is also brisk. The name, which was originally Wipendorp, is derived from an Augustine monastery, founded in 1130 by Vicelin, the apostle of Holstein, and is mentioned as “novum monasterium” in a document of 1136. Its industrial importance began in the 17th century, when the cloth-workers of Segeberg, a town to the south-east, migrated to it. It became a town in 1870.

 NEUNKIRCHEN, or, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the Blies, 12 m. N.W. of Saarbrücken by rail. Pop. (1905) 32,358, consisting almost equally of Protestants and Roman Catholics. It contains two Gothic Evangelical and a Romanesque Roman Catholic church, several schools, and a monument to Freiherr von Stumm (d. 1901), a former owner of the iron-works here. The principal industrial establishment is a huge iron-foundry, employing upwards of 4800 hands, and producing about 320,000 tons of pig-iron per annum; and there are also boiler-works, saw-mills, soap manufactories and a brewery. Around the town are important coal mines from which about 2 million tons of coal are raised annually. The castle built in 1570 was destroyed in 1797, and is now a ruin. The town is first mentioned in 1280, and became important industrially during the 18th century.

 NEUQUEN, an inland territory of Argentina on the Chilean frontier, between the Colorado and Limay rivers, with the province of Mendoza on the N. and the territory of Rio Negro on the E. and S. Area, 42,345 sq. m. Pop. (1895) 14,517; (1904, estimate) 18,022. The greater part of the territory is mountainous, with fertile, well-watered valleys and valuable forests. The eastern part, however, contains large barren plains, showing some stunted vegetation, and having numerous saline deposits. Long droughts prevail in this region and there is no inducement for settlement, the nomadic Indians visiting it only on their hunting expeditions. Guanacos and Argentine hares are found in abundance in Neuquen, and to a lesser degree the South American ostrich. The Neuquen, which unites with the Limay near the 68th meridian to form the Rio Negro, is the principal river of the territory. The largest of a group of beautiful lakes in the higher Andean valleys is the celebrated Nahuel-Huapi (Lion Grass), which is nearly 50 m. long from E. to W. and about 20 m. from N. to S. at its widest part, and which lies partly in the S.W. angle of the territory, partly in Rio Negro, and partly in the republic of Chile. It is the source of the Rio