Abel Posse
Abel Parentini Posse was born on 7 January 1934, in the Argentine city of Córdoba where he only lived the first two years of his life. Two years after birth the family moved to the capital city of Buenos Aires due to his father's work commitments. His mother, Elba Alicia Posse, belonged to the creole landed oligarchy of Galician descent who held vast sugar mill estates in the North West province of Tucuman. Amongst the influential members of the Posse clan in the 19th century, the liberal Julio Argentino Roca stands out, twice president of the republic from 1880 to 1886 and also 1898 to 1904 (3). Posse fictionalized 19th century Tucuman in his novel El inquietante día de la vida (2001), where two distant family relatives are the protagonists; his maternal great-grandfather, Felipe Segundo Posse, and Julio Victor Posse, patron of the arts in the sugar producing province until the 1940s.
Abel Transon
Abel Transon was born in Versailles on 25 December 1805 (Christmas Day). In 1823 he won a mathematical competition and was admitted to the prestigious École Polytechnique, from which he graduated with top honours in 1825. Like many of his fellow "Polytechniciens", (e.g., Prosper Enfantin, Olinde Rodrigues, Jules Lechevalier, Michel Chevalier and others), he was attracted to the doctrines of Henri de Saint-Simon. He contributed to "Le Globe" and was a frequent and popular orator at the Salle Taitbout. Like other Saint-Simonians, Transon believed in the equality of the sexes, but his special rapport with women induced the Saint-Simonian leader 'Père' Enfantin, to proclaim him the sect's 'apostle to the ladies'. However, when the Saint-Simonian school split in 1832, after a dispute between its leaders, Prosper Enfantin and Saint-Amand Bazard, Transon defected to the followers of Charles Fourier. He contributed to the journals of Victor Considerant, notably writing a number of articles on education. In 1834 he gave a series of lectures at the Society of Civilisation, concerning certain proposals for the mechanisation of agriculture. In 1834 he returned to the Catholic Church. He was an admirer of the Polish mystic Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński. He seems to have taken little part in politics after 1835, though he remained on friendly terms with his former utopian socialist colleagues, especially Jules Lechevalier, Hippolyte Renaud and Charles Pellarin. Transon's mother died in 1835, an event that greatly affected him and accelerated his transition to Catholicism and mysticism. Unlike more conservative Catholic philosophers of the time, Transon was and remained in favour of democracy.