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Thomas YoungEnglish physicist, doctor, Egyptologist
Date of Birth: 13.06.1773
Country:  Great Britain |
Content:
- Biography of Thomas Young
- Contributions to Optics and Physics
- Medical Career and Other Contributions
- Thomas Young passed away in London on May 10, 1829.
Biography of Thomas Young
Thomas Young was an English physicist, physician, and Egyptologist, and one of the outstanding figures in the world of science, art, and medicine in the early 19th century. He was born on June 13, 1773, in Milverton, Somerset, into a Quaker family. From an early age, he displayed extraordinary abilities and a phenomenal memory. By the age of two, he could read fluently, and by four, he had memorized many works of English poets. By the age of 14, he had familiarized himself with differential calculus (based on Newton), studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew, Italian, and French, and read works by classical authors in their original languages.
Young studied medicine in London, Edinburgh, Göttingen, and Cambridge from 1792 to 1803, but later became fascinated with physics, particularly optics and acoustics. At the age of 21, in 1794, he became a member of the Royal Society, and from 1802 to 1829, he served as its secretary. He obtained a doctorate in medicine and, with a small inheritance, opened a private practice in London.
Contributions to Optics and Physics
Young's research in the field of optics formed the basis of his brilliant work "The Mechanism of the Eye" (1800), in which he provided an explanation for the nature of accommodation, astigmatism, and color vision. In 1801, with the support of Benjamin Thompson, Young was appointed a professor at the Royal Institution, where he delivered a series of lectures between 1801 and 1803, later published under the title "Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts" (1807). Young was one of the creators of the wave theory of light. He was the first to indicate the reinforcement and weakening of sound when sound waves are superimposed and proposed the principle of wave superposition. In 1801, he explained the phenomenon of interference of light and introduced this term, providing an interpretation of Newton's rings. In 1802, he conducted the first experiment on the observation of interference by obtaining two coherent light sources. This experiment became a classic, just like François Arago's famous experiment. In 1803, Young attempted to explain the diffraction of light. He hypothesized the transverse nature of light waves, discovered interference of ultraviolet rays, and measured the wavelengths of light of different colors. In the theory of elasticity, Young conducted studies on shear deformation and introduced the concept of modulus of elasticity, known as Young's modulus.
Medical Career and Other Contributions
From 1811 until his death, Young worked as a physician at St. George's Hospital in London. He was interested in tuberculosis treatment, studied the functioning of the heart, and worked on the development of a disease classification system. From 1814 to 1825, Young wrote about 60 chapters for the appendix to the fourth edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica." He served as a consultant to the Admiralty (1814), was the secretary of the Board of Longitude, editor of the Nautical Almanac (1814–1829), and an advisor to Parliament on weights and measures. He derived a formula for constructing mortality tables essential in the insurance business (1826).
Young's interest in language study led him to attempt the compilation of an Egyptian dictionary. In 1823, he offered his interpretation of some Egyptian hieroglyphs, determined the meaning of several symbols on the Rosetta Stone, and paved the way for the successful decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion.
