Thomas Young (scientist)

Thomas Young (June 13, 1773 – May 10, 1829) was an English scientist and researcher. He is sometimes considered to be The Last Person to Know Everything: that is, he was familiar with virtually all the Western academic knowledge at that point in history. Clearly this can never be verified, and other claimants to this title are Gottfried Leibniz, Leonardo da Vinci and Francis Bacon, amongst others.

Researches

Double-slit experiment

Young is perhaps best known for his work in physical optics, as the author of a remarkable series of researches which did much to establish the wave theory of light, and as the discoverer of the interference of light. In Young's double-slit experiment, c. 1801, he passed a beam of light through two parallel slits in an opaque screen, forming a pattern of alternating light and dark bands on a white surface beyond. This led Young to reason that light was composed of waves. (see also Newton, Isaac, wave-particle duality)

Related Topics:
Physical - Interference - Double-slit experiment - 1801 - Beam - Light - Wave - Newton, Isaac - Wave-particle duality

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Young's modulus

Young also devised Young's modulus, a measure of the stiffness of a material.

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Vision

He has also been called the founder of physiological optics. In 1793 he explained the mode in which the eye accommodates itself to vision at different distances as depending on change of the curvature of the crystalline lens; in 1801 he described the defect known as astigmatism; and in his Lectures he put forward the hypothesis, afterwards developed by Hermann von Helmholtz, that colour perception depends on the presence in the retina of three kinds of nerve fibres which respond respectively to red, green and violet light. In physiology he made an important contribution to haemadynamics in the Croonian lecture for 1808 on the "Functions of the Heart and Arteries," and his medical writings included An Introduction to Medical Literature, including a System of Practical Nosology (1813) and A Practical and Historical Treatise on Consumptive Diseases (1815).

Related Topics:
1793 - Crystalline lens - 1801 - Astigmatism - Hermann von Helmholtz - 1808 - 1813 - 1815

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Hieroglyphics

In another field of research, he was one of the first successful workers at the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics; by 1814 he had completely translated the enchorial (demotic) text of the Rosetta Stone, and a few years later had made considerable progress towards an understanding of the hieroglyphic alphabet. In 1823 he published an Account of the Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphic Literature and Egyptian Antiquities. Some of his conclusions appeared in the famous article of Egypt which in 1818 he wrote for the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Related Topics:
Decipherment - Egyptian - Hieroglyphics - 1814 - Demotic - Rosetta Stone - Hieroglyphic alphabet - 1823 - 1818 - Encyclopædia Britannica

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