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No one has given the polymath Thomas Young (1773–1829) 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.
As a physicist, Young challenged the theories of Isaac Newton and proved that light is a wave. As a physician, he showed how the eye focuses and proposed the three-colour theory of vision, only confirmed a century and a half later. As an Egyptologist, he made crucial contributions to deciphering the Rosetta Stone. It is hard to grasp how much Young knew.
This biography is the fascinating story of a driven yet modest hero who cared less about what others thought of him than for the joys of an unbridled pursuit of knowledge—with a new foreword by Martin Rees and a new postscript discussing polymathy in the two centuries since the time of Young. It returns this neglected genius to his proper position in the pantheon of great scientific thinkers.
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Keywords
- Archaeology
- Archaeology by period / region
- Biography
- Biography & True Stories
- Biography: general
- Biography: science, technology & medicine
- decipher
- Diaries, letters & journals
- Egyptian archaeology / Egyptology
- Egyptologist
- Humanities
- physician
- physicist
- Rosetta stone
- thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DN Biography and non-fiction prose::DNB Biography: general
- thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DN Biography and non-fiction prose::DNB Biography: general::DNBT Biography: science, technology and medicine
- thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DN Biography and non-fiction prose::DND Diaries, letters and journals
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NK Archaeology::NKD Archaeology by period / region
- Thomas Young
Links
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0344Editions