Thomas Young The man Who Knew Everything Andrew Robinson marvels at the brain power and breadth of knowledge of the 18th-century polymath Thomas Young. He examines his relationship with his contemporaries, particularly with the French Egyptologist Champollion, and how he has been viewed subsequently by historians. ORTUNATE NEWTON, happy professor of natural philosophy at childhood of science!’ Albert the newly founded Royal Institution, F Einstein wrote in 1931 in his where in 1802-03 he delivered what foreword to the fourth edition of is generally regarded as the most far- Newton’s influential treatise Opticks, reaching series of lectures ever given originally published in 1704. by a scientist; a physician at a major London hospital, St George’s, for a Nature to him was an open book, quarter of a century; the secretary of whose letters he could read without the Admiralty’s Board of Longitude effort. ... Reflection, refraction, the and superintendent of its vital Nauti- formation of images by lenses, the cal Almanac from 1818 until his mode of operation of the eye, the death; and ‘inspector of calculations’ spectral decomposition and recom- for a leading life insurance company position of the different kinds of in the 1820s. In 1794, he was elected light, the invention of the reflecting a fellow of the Royal Society at the telescope, the first foundations of age of barely twenty-one, became its colour theory, the elementary theory foreign secretary at the age of thirty, of the rainbow pass by us in and turned down its presidency in procession, and finally come his his fifties. No wonder, the organizers observations of the colours of thin of an exhibition at London’s Science films as the origin of the next great Thomas Young, painted by Sir Thomas Museum in 1973 stated: theoretical advance, which had to Lawrence in the 1820s. await, over a hundred years, the Young probably had a wider range of coming of Thomas Young. some phonetic elements, an ‘alpha- creative learning than any other bet’, for spelling non-Egyptian Englishman in history. He made Everyone who studies physics at names like Ptolemy and Cleopatra. discoveries in nearly every field he school is taught that Thomas Young Less well known is that Young was a studied. (1773-1829) was the English scientist physiologist who was the first to who first demonstrated – with a explain how the human eye focuses Born to a Quaker family in Somer- candle, a pair of narrow slits and a on objects at varying distances; who set, Young was a child prodigy, who white screen – that light was a wave, discovered the phenomenon of astig- later trained as a physician in Lon- thus disproving Newton’s conviction matism; and who in 1801 proposed don, Edinburgh and Göttingen and that it consisted of a stream of par- the three-colour theory of vision, at Cambridge, where he was known ticles. Equally, anyone who studies finally confirmed experimentally in to the students as ‘Phenomenon’ ancient Egypt will know that Young 1959. Young with a mixture of respect and was the linguist and antiquarian who In addition, Young was a major derision. He has never lacked for ‘cracked’ the two Egyptian scripts on scholar of ancient Greek; a phen- admirers among great scientists. Just the Rosetta Stone, which then omenal linguist who, after compar- after Young’s death, the astronomer launched the full decipherment of ing the vocabulary and grammar of Sir John Herschel called him a ‘truly the Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean- some 400 languages, in 1813 intro- original genius’ and added that ‘to François Champollion in the 1820s. duced the term Indo-European to do anything approaching to justice Young was the first to show that describe the language family that to his reputation … would call for demotic to some extent resembled includes Greek, Latin and Sanskrit; the exercise of powers more nearly hieroglyphic visually, hence demotic and an extraordinarily prolific and allied to his own than I can pretend was derived from hieroglyphic, and authoritative writer, mainly for the to boast’. Later in the century, the demotic was not an alphabet like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, on all man- physicist and physiologist Hermann Greek alphabet on the Rosetta Stone ner of other subjects from carpentry von Helmholtz stated that Young but rather a mixture of phonetic and music to life insurance and signs and hieroglyphic signs. This ocean tides, as well as biographies of ... was one of the most acute men who thinking led Young to suggest that eminent scientists and scholars. His ever lived, but had the misfortune to hieroglyphic, too, might contain professional appointments included: be too far in advance of his contem- APRIL 2006 HISTORY TODAY 53 THOMAS YOUNG: THE MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING bered today for being the first per- This applies very well to Young in son to identify clearly the similarities respect of his research on ancient between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Egypt – which is probably the part of Gothic (Germanic), Celtic and Old his work of greatest interest to most Persian (the language family which historians. Young’s ability to deci- Young then dubbed ‘Indo-Euro- pher the Rosetta Stone and ancient pean’) – but Jones worked in many Egyptian papyruses was undoubtedly other fields too. An Oxford Universi- fed by his powers of mathematical ty symposium on the bicentenary of analysis and scientific intuition, by his death in 1994, edited by Murray, his philological scholarship in required separate contributions ancient Greek and Oriental lan- from a Sanskritist and an Arabist, a guages, by his immersion since child- theologian, a lawyer (Jones was a hood in the civilizations of the classi- judge) and an anthropologist, cal world, and by his exceptionally among others. Murray acutely detailed knowledge of the history of remarked: ideas in science and medicine, evi- dent in all his publications, especially History is unkind to polymaths. No his greatest work, A Course of Lectures biographer will readily tackle a sub- in Natural Philosophy and the Mechani- ject whose range of skills far exceeds cal Arts, derived from his Royal Insti- Young’s work of 1815 on consumption, his own, while the rest of us, with or tution lectures and published in in which he drew on his experience of 1807, the second volume of which contracting the disease as a teenager. consists of a systematized and anno- tated catalogue containing 20,000 articles ranging from the ancient poraries. They looked on him with Greeks up to 1805. Yet, having said astonishment, but could not follow all this, Young’s contribution to the his bold speculations, and thus a mass hieroglyphic decipherment is fre- of his important thoughts remained quently underplayed and sometimes buried and forgotten in the Trans- even virtually dismissed in favour of actions of the Royal Society until a Champollion’s. Indeed, the dispute later generation by slow degrees between them has become the most arrived at the rediscovery of his notorious in the history of archaeo- discoveries, and came to appreciate logical decipherment, still partly the force of his arguments and the unresolved to this day. accuracy of his conclusions. Young stated that Champollion Diagram of the eye, from A Course of had built his system of reading hiero- While in 1899, lecturing on the Lectures on Natural Philosophy (1807). glyphics on Young’s own discoveries centenary of the Royal Institution, and his hieroglyphic ‘alphabet’, the physicist Lord Rayleigh declared published in various articles and in a simply: ‘it was seldom that [Young] without biographies to read, have no was wrong’. A century later, in 2005, mental ‘slot’ in which to keep a poly- a Nobel laureate in physics, Philip math’s memory fresh. So the poly- Anderson, summarized Young’s math gets forgotten or, at best, achievements as follows: squashed into a category we can recognize, in the way Goethe is He elucidated the optics of the eye, remembered as a poet, despite his the wave theory of light, the laws of claim to have been a scientist, or elasticity, the nature of the Egyptian Hume as a philosopher, for all the six hieroglyphic writing, and Lord knows dumpy volumes of his History of Eng- how many other subjects. land. [Yet,] There are times when a mind of exceptional range, bestriding Among non-scientists, Young’s many conventional disciplines, makes position has been less secure. His a breakthrough in each because he reputation, like those of Robert knows the others, and all of them go Hooke, Benjamin Franklin and on their way, afterwards, without Alexander von Humboldt, has suf- necessarily recognizing what he did or fered from his being a polymath. how he did it. If history is not to be Polymathy is disturbing, especially to chronically misremembered, it follows specialists, as historian Alexander that a constant effort must be made – Murray noted in connection with Sir as constant as the mechanism that William ‘Oriental’ Jones (1746-94), a pulls invisibly in the other direction – Calculations from the Nautical Almanac polymath of the generation before to recall those polymathic minds that of 1822, for which Young acted as Young’s. Jones is primarily remem- have made these critical turns. superintendent (i.e. chief calculator). 54 HISTORY TODAY APRIL 2006 major supplement to the Encyclopae- ‘Scientific researches! – new discoveries Young his due, admits: dia Britannica in 1815-19. While pay- in pneumaticks! – or an experimental ing generous tribute to Champol- lecture on the powers of air’, published ... the suspicion may easily arise, and lion’s unrivalled progress from 1822 in May 1802 by James Gillray, probably often has done, that any eulogy of onwards, Young wanted his early shows Young, watched by Humphry Thomas Young must be intended as a steps recognized.