ABEKEN, HEINRICH (1809-1872), German theologian and
Prussian official, was born at Berlin on the 8th of August
1809. He studied theology at Berlin and in 1834 became
chaplain to the Prussian embassy in Rome. In 1841 he visited
England, being commissioned by King Frederick William IV.
to make arrangements for the establishment of the Protestant
bishopric of Jerusalem. In 1848 he received an appointment
in the Prussian ministry for foreign affairs, and in 1853
was promoted to be privy councillor of legation (Geheimer
Legationsrath). He was much employed by Bismarck in the
writing of official despatches, and stood high in the favour
of King William, whom he often accompanied on his journeys
as representative of the foreign office. He was present with
the king during the campaigns of 1866 and 1870-71. In 1851 he
published anonymously Babylon unnd Jerusalem, a slashing
criticism of the views of the Countess von Hahn-Hahn (q.v.).
See Heinrich Abeken, ein schlichtes Leben in bewegter Zeit
(Berlin, 1898), by his widow. This is valuable by reason
of the letters written from the Prussian headquarters.
ABEL (Hebrew for breath), the second son of Adam, slain
by Cain, his elder brother (Gen. iv. 1-16). The narrative
in Genesis which tells us that ``the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering
he had not respect,'' is supplemented by the statement of the
New Testament, that ``by faith Abel offered unto God a more
excellent sacrifice than Cain'' (Heb. xi. 4), and that Cain
slew Abel ``because his own works were evil and his brother's
righteous'' (1 John iii. 12). See further under CAIN. The
name has been identified with the Assyrian ablu, ``son,'' but
this is far from certain. It more probably means ``herdsman''
(cf. the name Jabal), and a distinction is drawn between the
pastoral Abel and the agriculturist Cain. If Cain is the eponym
of the Kenites it is quite possible that Abel was originally
a South Judaean demigod or hero; on this, see Winckler,
Gesch. Israels, ii. p. 189; E. Meyer, Israelitein, p.
395. A sect of Abelitae, who seem to have lived in North
Africa, is mentioned by Augustine (De Haeresibus, lxxxvi.).
ABEL, SIR FREDERICK AUGUSTUS, BART. (1827-1902), English
chemist, was born in London on the 17th of July 1827. After
studying chemistry for six years under A. W. von Hofmann at the
Royal College of Chemistry (established in London in 1845), he
became professor of chemistry at the Royal Military Academy in
1851, and three years later was appointed chemist to the War
Department and chemical referee to the government. During
his tenure of this office, which lasted until 1888, he carried
out a large amount of work in connexion with the chemistry of
explosives. One of the most important of his investigations
had to do with the manufacture of guncotton, and he developed
a process, consisting essentially of reducing the nitrated
cotton to fine pulp, which enabled it to be prepared with
practically no danger and at the same time yielded the
product in a form that increased its usefulness. This work
to an important extent prepared the way for the ``smokeless
powders'' which came into general use towards the end of the
19th century; cordite, the particular form adopted by the
British government in 1891, was invented jointly by him and
Professor James Dewar. Our knowledge of the explosion of
ordinary black powder was also greatly added to by him, and
in conjunction with Sir Andrew Noble he carried out one of
the most complete inquiries on record into its behaviour when
fired. The invention of the apparatus, legalized in 1879, for
the determination of the flash-point of petroleum, was another
piece of work which fell to him by virtue of his official
position. His first instrument, the open-test apparatus, was
prescribed by the act of 1868, but, being found to possess
certain defects, it was superseded in 1879 by the Abel close-test
instrument (see PETROLEUM). In electricity Abel studied
the construction of electrical fuses and other applications
of electricity to warlike purposes, and his work on problems
of steel manufacture won him in 1897 the Bessemer medal of the
Iron and Steel Institute, of which from 1891 to 1893 he was
president. He was president of the Institution of Electrical
Engineers (then the Society of Telegraph Engineers) in
1877. He became a member of the Royal Society in 1860,
and received a royal medal in 1887. He took an important
part in the work of the Inventions Exhibition (London) in
1885, and in 1887 became organizing secretary and first
director of the Imperial Institute, a position he held till
his death, which occurred in London on the 6th of September
1902. He was knighted in 1891, and created a baronet in 1893.
Among his books were--Handbook of Chemistry (with C. L.
Bloxam), Modern History of Gunpowder (1866), Gun-cotton
(1866), On Explosive Agents (1872), Researches in
Explosives (1875), and Electricity applied to Explosive
Purposes (1884). He also wrote several important articles
in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
ABEL, KARL FRIEDRICH (1725-1787), German musician, was
born in Kothen in 1725, and died on the 20th of June 1787 in
London. He was a great player on the viola da gamba,
and composed much music of importance in its day for that
instrument. He studied under Johann Sebastian Bach at
the Leipzig Thomasschule; played for ten years (1748-1758)
under A. Hasse in the band formed at Dresden by the elector
of Saxony; and then, going to England, became (in 1759)
chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte. He gave a concert
of his own compositions in London, performing on various
instruments, one of which, the pentachord, was newly
invented. In 1762 Johann Christian Bach, the eleventh son
of Sebastian, came to London, and the friendship between
him and Abel led, in 1764 or 1765, to the establishment of
the famous concerts subsequently known as the Bach and Abel
concerts. For ten years these were organized by Mrs Comelys,
whose enterprises were then the height of fashion. In 1775
the concerts became independent of her, and were continued
by Abel unsuccessfully for a year after Bach's death in
1782. At them the works of Haydn were first produced in
England. After the failure of his concert undertakings
Abel still remained in great request as a player on various
instruments new and old, but he took to drink and thereby
hastened his death. He was a man of striking presence, of whom
several fine portraits, including two by Gainsborough, exist.
ABEL, NIELS HENRIK (1802-1829), Norwegian mathematician,
was born at Findoe on the 25th of August 1802. In 1815 he
entered the cathedral school at Christiania, and three years
later he gave proof of his mathematical genius by his brilliant
solutions of the original problems proposed by B. Holmboe.
About this time, his father, a poor Protestant minister,
died, and the family was left in straitened circumstances;
but a small pension from the state allowed Abel to enter
Christiania University in 1821. His first notable work was a
proof of the impossibility of solving the quintic equation by
radicals. This investigation was first published in 1824
and in abstruse and difficult form, and afterwards (1826)
more elaborately in the first volume of Crelle's Journal.
Further state aid enabled him to visit Germany and France in
1825, and having visited the astronomer Heinrich Schumacher
(178-1850) at Hamburg, he spent six months in Berlin, where
he became intimate with August Leopold Crelle, who was then
about to publish his mathematical journal. This project
was warmly encouraged by Abel, who contributed much to the
success of the venture. From Berlin he passed to Freiberg,
and here he made his brilliant researches in the theory of
functions, elliptic, hyperelliotic and a new class known as
Abelians being particularly studied. In 1826 he moved to
Paris, and during a ten months' stay he met the leading
mathematicians of France; but he was little appreciated, for
his work was scarcely known, and his modesty restrained him
from proclaiming his researches. Pecuniary embarrassments,
from which he had never been free, finally compelled him
to abandon his tour, and on his return to Norway he taught
for some time at Christiania. In 1829 Crelle obtained a
post for him at Berlin, but the offer did not reach Norway
until after his death near Arendal on the 6th of April.
The early death of this talented mathematician, of whom
Legendre said ``quelle tete celle du jeune Norvegien!'',
cut short a career of extraordinary brilliance and promise.
Under Abel's guidance, the prevailing obscurities of analysis
began to be cleared, new fields were entered upon and the
study of functions so advanced as to provide mathematicians
with numerous ramifications along which progress could be
made. His works, the greater part of which originally
appeared in Crelle's Journal, were edited by Holmbor and
published in 1839 by the Swedish government, and a more
complete edition by L. Sylow and S. Lie was published in 1881.
For further details of his mathematical investigations see the
articles GROUPS, THEORY OF, and FUNCTIONS OF COMPLEX VARIABLES.
See C. A. Bjerknes, Niels Henrik Abel: Tableau de sa
vie et son action scientifique (Paris, 1885); Lucas
de Peslouan, Niels Henrik Abel (Paris, 1906).
ABEL (better ABELL), THOMAS (d. 1540), an English priest
who was martyred during the reign of Henry VIII. The place
and date of his birth are unknown. He was educated at Oxford
and entered the service of Queen Catherine some time before
1528, when he was sent by her to the emperor Charles V. on a
mission relating to the proposed divorce. On his return he
was presented by Catherine to the living of Bradwell, in Essex,
and remained to the last a staunch supporter of the unfortunate
queen. In 1533, he published his Invicta Veritas (with
the fictitious pressmark of Luneberge, to avoid suspicion),
which contained an answer to the numerous tracts supporting
Henry's ecclesiastical claims. After an imprisonment of more
than six years, Abel was sentenced to death for denying the
royal supremacy in the church, and was executed at Smithfield
on the 30th of July 1540. There is still to be seen on the
wall of his prison in the Tower the symbol of a bell with
an A upon it and the name Thomas above, winch he carved
during his confinement. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII.
See J. Gillow's Bibl. Dictionary of Eng. Catholics, vol. i.;
Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII., vols. iv.-vii. passim.
ABELARD, PETER (1079-1142), scholastic philosopher, was born
at Pallet (Palais), not far from Nantes, in 1079. He was the
eldest son of a noble Breton house. The name Abaelardus
(also written Abailardus, Abaielardus, and in many other
ways) is said to be a corruption of Habelardus, substituted
by himself for a nickname Bajolardus given to him when a
student. As a boy, he showed an extraordinary quickness of
apprehension, and, choosing a learned life instead of the
knightly career natural to a youth of his birth, early became
an adept in the art of dialectic, under which name philosophy,
meaning at that time chiefly the logic of Aristotle transmitted
through Latin channels, was the great subject of liberal
study in the episcopal schools. Roscellinus, the famous
canon of Compiegne, is mentioned by himself as his teacher;
but whether he heard this champion of extreme Nominalism in
early youth, when he wandered about from school to school
for instruction and exercise, or some years later, after he
