The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, the Anonymous Genius Who Proved Newton Wrong and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Surprising Feats

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�??Fortunate Newton �?� Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort. �?� His observations of the colors of thin films [were] the origin of the next great theoretical advance, which had to await, over a hundred years, the coming of Thomas Young.�??

�??Albert Einstein, Foreword to the fourth edition of Isaac Newton�??s Opticks, 1931

 

Praise for The Last Man Who Knew Everything

 

�??By documenting the extraordinary life and career of Thomas Young, this book reminds us how most of us tap only a small proportion of our full potential. It is also a cautionary tale on how society reacts to individuals who cannot be pigeon-holed.�??

�??Sir Arthur C. Clarke

�??Thomas Young has long awaited a first-class biography, and Andrew Robinson has provided one. It is the best biography I have read for many years.�??

�??Sir Patrick Moore, Fellow of the Royal Society, astronomer and writer

�??Thomas Young elucidated the optics of the eye, the wave theory of light, the laws of elasticity, the nature of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, and Lord knows how many other subjects.  It is wonderful to have such an elegant biography of this remarkable man.�??

�??Philip Anderson, Nobel Laureate in physics, Princeton University

 

Praise for Andrew Robinson�??s biography of Satyajit Ray

 

�??An extraordinarily good, detailed, and selfless book.�??

�??V. S. Naipaul, Nobel Laureate in literature

 

Here is the story of an amazing character at a turning point in the history of knowledge. No one has given the extraordinary Thomas Young the all-round examination he so richly deserves�??until now.  Celebrated biographer Andrew Robinson portrays a man who solved mystery after mystery in the face of ridicule and rejection, and never sought fame.

Was Young really the last man who knew everything? Physics textbooks identify Thomas Young (1773-1829) as the experimenter who first proved that light is a wave�??not a stream of corpuscles as Newton proclaimed. In any book on the eye and vision, Young is the London physician who showed how the eye focuses and proposed the three-color theory of vision�??confirmed only in 1959. Then again, in any book on ancient Egypt, Young is credited for his crucial detective work in deciphering the Rosetta Stone. It is hard to grasp how much he knew.

Invited to contribute to a new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Young offered the following subjects: Alphabet, Annuities, Attraction, Capillary Action, Cohesion, Color, Dew, Egypt, Eye, Focus, Friction, Halo, Hieroglyphic, Hydraulics, Motion, Resistance, Ship, Sound, Strength, Tides, Waves, and �??anything of a medical nature.�?? He asked that all his contributions be kept anonymous.

While not yet thirty, he gave a course of lectures at the Royal Institution covering virtually all of known science. But polymathy made him unpopular in the academy. An early attack on his wave theory of light was so scathing that English physicists buried it for nearly two decades until it was rediscovered in France. But slowly, after his death, great scientists began to recognize his genius.

Today, in an age of professional specialization unimaginable in 1800, polymathy still disturbs us. Is this insatiable curiosity selfish or even irresponsible?  Either way, Young�??s character has a quality all but lost in our narcissistic culture.  Here is the story of a driven yet modest hero, someone who could make the grandiose claim to have been the last man who knew everything, but for the fact that he cared less about what others thought of him than for the joys of an unbridled pursuit of knowledge.

 

The hand-colored satirical etching by James Gillray, 1802, on the back cover�??Scientific Researches!�??New Discoveries in PNEUMATICKS!�??or�??an Experimental Lecture on the Powers of Air�??shows Thomas Young, professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution, experimenting on its manager while watched by Humphry Davy (holding bellows). The man with a bulbous nose standing at the right is the inventor Count Rumford, who founded the Royal Institution.

 

The formal portrait of Thomas Young was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the 1820s. (Courtesy Simon Young)