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TEST 9 – Thomas Young The Last Know-It-All
Thomas Young (1773-1829) contributed 63 articles to the Encyclopedia Britannica, including 46
biographical entries (mostly on scientists and classicists) and substantial essays on "Bridge," "Chromatics,"
"Egypt," "Languages" and "Tides". Was someone who could write authoritatively about so many subjects a
polymath, a genius or a dilettante? In an ambitious new biography, Andrew Robinson argues that Young is a
good contender for the epitaph "the last man who knew everything." Young has competition, however: The
phrase, which Robinson takes for his title, also serves as the subtitle of two other recent biographies:
Leonard Warren's 1998 life of paleontologist Joseph Leidy (1823-1891) and Paula Findlen's 2004 book on
Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), another polymath.
Young, of course, did more than write encyclopedia entries. He presented his first paper to the Royal
Society of London at the age of 20 and was elected a Fellow a week after his 21st birthday. In the paper,
Young explained the process of accommodation in the human eye —on how
the eye focuses properly on
objects at varying distances. Young hypothesised that this was achieved by changes in the shape of the lens.
Young also theorised that light traveled in waves and ho believed that, to account for the ability to see in
color, there must be three receptors in the eye corresponding to the three "principal colors" to which the
retina could respond: red, green, violet. All these hypotheses Were subsequently proved to be correct.
Later in his life, when he was in his forties, Young was instrumental in cracking the code that
unlocked the unknown script on the Rosetta Stone, a tablet that was "found" in Egypt by the Napoleonic
army in 1799. The stone contains text in three alphabets: Greek, something unrecognisable and Egyptian
hieroglyphs. The unrecognisable script is now known as demotic and, as
Young deduced, is related directly
to hieroglyphic. His initial work on this appeared in his Britannica entry on Egypt. In another entry, he
coined the term Indo-European to describe the family of languages spoken throughout most of Europe and
northern India. These are the landmark achievements of a man who was a child prodigy and who, unlike
many remarkable children, did not disappear into oblivion as an adult.
Born in 1773 in Somerset in England, Young lived from an early age with his maternal grandfather,
eventually leaving to attend boarding school. He had devoured books from the age of two, and through his
own initiative
he excelled at Latin, Greek, mathematics and natural philosophy. After leaving school, he
was greatly encouraged by his mother's uncle, Richard Brocklesby, a physician and Fellow of the Royal
Society. Following Brocklesby's lead, Young decided to pursue a career in medicine. He studied in London,
following the medical circuit, and then moved on to more formal education in Edinburgh, Gottingen and
Cambridge. After completing his medical training at the University of Cambridge in 1808, Young set up
practice as a physician in London. He soon became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a few
years later was appointed physician at St. George's Hospital.
Young's
skill as a physician, however, did not equal his skill as a scholar of natural philosophy or
linguistics. Earlier, in 1801, he had been appointed to a professorship of natural philosophy at the Royal
Institution, where he delivered as many as 60 lectures in a year. These were published in two volumes in
1807. In 1804 Young had become secretary to the Royal Society, a post he would hold until his death. His
opinions were sought on civic and national matters, such as the introduction of gas lighting to London and
methods of ship construction. From 1819 he was superintendent of the Nautical Almanac and secretary to
the Board of Longitude. From 1824 to 1829 he was physician to and inspector of calculations for the
Palladian Insurance Company. Between 1816 and 1825 he contributed his many and various entries to the
Encyclopedia Britannica, and throughout his career
he authored numerous books, essays and papers.
Young is a perfect subject for a biography perfect, but daunting. Few men contributed so much to so many
technical fields. Robinson's aim is to introduce non-scientists to Young's work and life. He succeeds,
providing clear expositions of the technical material (especially that on optics and Egyptian hieroglyphs).
Some readers of this book will, like Robinson, find Young's accomplishments impressive; others will see
him as some historians have as a dilettante. Yet despite the rich material presented in this book, readers will