TOPPAN, Robert Noxon, author, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 17 October, 1836. He was graduated at Harvard in 1858 and at Columbia law-school in 1861, and became a practising lawyer, afterward removing to Cambridge, Massachusetts He is a member of various historical and antiquarian societies, served on the international coinage committee of the American social science association, and was a delegate in 1878 to the International congress for the nullification of weights, measures, and money. He has translated Theodore Simon Jouffroy's "Ethics" (New York, 1862), and is the author of "Historical Succession of Monetary Metallic Standards," a pamphlet (1877) ; "Some Modern Monetary Questions," a pamphlet (Philadelphia, 1881); "Historical Summary of Metallic Money" (Boston, 1884)" and "Biographical Sketches of Old New-bury" (Newburyport, 1885).