Dorsch (Eduard), German American Freethinker, b. Warzburg 10 Jan. 1822. He studied at Munich and Vienna. In ’49 he went to America and settled in Monroe, Michigan, where he published a volume of poems, some being translations from Swinburne. Died 10 Jan. 1887.
Dorsey (J. M.), author of the The True History of Moses, and others, an attack on the Bible, published at Boston in 1855.
Draparnaud (Jacques Philippe Raymond), French doctor, b. 3 June, 1772, at Montpelier, where he became Professor of Natural History. His discourses on Life and Vital Functions, and on the Philosophy of the Sciences and Christianity (1801), show his scepticism. Died 1 Feb. 1805.
Draper (John William), scientist and historian, b. St. Helens, near Liverpool, 5 May 1811. The son of a Wesleyan minister, he was educated at London University. In ’32 he emigrated to America, where he was Professor of Chemistry and Natural History in New York University. He was one of the inventors of photography and the first who applied it to astronomy. He wrote many scientific works, notably on Human Physiology. His history of the American Civil War is an important work, but he is chiefly known by his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe and History of the Conflict of Religion and Science, which last has gone through many editions and been translated into all the principal languages. Died 4 Jan. 1882.
Dreyfus (Ferdinand Camille), author of an able work on the Evolution of Worlds and Societies, 1888.
Droysen (Johann Gustav), German historian, b. Treptoir, 6 July, 1808. Studied at Berlin; wrote in the Hallische Jahrbücher; was Professor of History at Keil, 1840; Jena ’51 and Berlin ’59. Has edited Frederick the Great’s Correspondence, and written other important works, some in conjunction with his friend Max Duncker. Died 15 June, 1882.
Drummond (Sir William), of Logie Almond, antiquary and author, b. about 1770; entered Parliament as member for St. Mawes, Cornwall, 1795. In the following year he became envoy to the court of Naples, and in 1801 ambassador to Constantinople. His principal work is Origines, or Remarks on the Origin of several Empires, States, and Cities (4 vols. 1824–29). He also printed privately The Œdipus Judaicus, 1811. It calls in question, with much boldness and learning, many legends of the Old Testament, to which it gave an astronomical signification. It was reprinted in ’66. Sir William Drummond also wrote anonymously Philosophical Sketches of the Principles of Society, 1795. Died at Rome, 29 March, 1828.
Duboc (Julius) German writer and doctor of philosophy b. Hamburg, 10 Oct. 1829. Educated at Frankfurt and Giessen, is a clever journalist, and has translated the History of the English Press. Has written an Atheistic work, Das Leben Ohne Gott (Life without God), with the motto from Feuerbach “No religion is my religion, no philosophy my philosophy,” 1875. He has also written on the Psychology of Love, and other important works.
Dubois (Pierre), a French sceptic, who in 1835 published The True Catechism of Believers—a work ordered by the Court of Assizes to be suppressed, and for which the author (Sept. ’35) was condemned to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of one thousand francs. He also wrote The Believer Undeceived, or Evident Proofs of the Falsity and Absurdity of Christianity; a work put on the Index in ’36.
Du Bois-Reymond (Emil), biologist, of Swiss father and French mother, b. Berlin, 7 Nov. 1818. He studied at Berlin and Bonn for the Church, but left it to follow science, ’37. Has become famous as a physiologist, especially by his Researches in Animal Electricity, ’48–60. With Helmholtz he has done much to establish the new era of positive science, wrongly called by opponents Materialism. Du Bois-Reymond holds that thought is a function of the brain and nervous system, and that “soul” has arisen as the gradual results of natural combinations, but in his Limits of the Knowledge of Nature, ’72, he contends that we must always come to an ultimate incomprehensible. Du Bois-Reymond has written on Voltaire and Natural Science, ’68; La Mettrie, ’75; Darwin versus Galiani, ’78; and Frederick II. and Rousseau, ’79. Since ’67 he has been perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, Berlin.