The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, The Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius: Robinson, Andrew: 9780131343047: Amazon.com: Books

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Andrew Robinson

The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, The Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius Hardcover – December 7, 2005

by Andrew Robinson (Author)

3.9 45 ratings

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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. 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 Encyclopedia Britannica, Young offered the following subjects: Alphabet, Annuities, Attraction, Capillary Action, Cohesion, Colour, 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 recognized his genius.
Today, in an age of professional specialization unimaginable in 1800, polymathy still disturbs us. Is this kind of curiosity selfish, even irresponsible? Here is the story of a driven yet modest hero, the last man who knew everything.

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304
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Pi Press
Publication date

2005
December 7
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6.3 x 1.3 x 9.5
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ISBN-10

0131343041
ISBN-13

978-0131343047
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The subtitle is an outline for the book's contents: Thomas Young, the Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius. Born a half century after Newton's death, Young (1773–1829) disproved the great scientist's theory of light, demonstrating with a now-classic refraction experiment that light travels in waves. He showed how the eye is able to change its depth of focus by becoming more or less convex, and was the first to conceive the correct theory of color vision (which wasn't proved experimentally until 1959) and to accurately explain colorblindness and astigmatism. In between all of this, he was a practicing doctor and made substantial contributions to translating the Rosetta Stone. In our age of specialization, it's inconceivable that one man could make breakthroughs in so many different fields; toward the end of his life, Young wrote 63 articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica. Robinson (The Story of Writing) shines a light on this largely forgotten polymath, relying on Young's letters and writings as well as substantial works by his contemporaries to put Young's achievements in context. This thoroughly researched biography is as scattered in topics as Young's varied interests, but Robinson successfully portrays a genius who lived in a time when the fields of knowledge were fertile for new discoveries. (Jan.)
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About the Author

Andrew Robinson is a King’s Scholar of Eton College and holds degrees from Oxford University (in science) and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He is the author of more than a dozen books including four biographies: Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity; The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris; Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye; and Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man (written with Krishna Dutta). Since 1994, he has been the literary editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement in London.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pi Press; First Edition (December 7, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0131343041
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0131343047
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,268,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,270 in History of Technology
- #2,543 in Scientist Biographies

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3.9 45 ratings

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Andrew Robinson

Andrew Robinson

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Andrew Robinson has written more than twenty-five books on an unusual range of subjects: science and the history of science; ancient scripts, writing systems and archaeological decipherment; and Indian history and culture. They include six biographies: of the physicist Albert Einstein (A Hundred Years of Relativity) and the polymath Thomas Young (The Last Man Who Knew Everything); of the decipherers Jean-Francois Champollion (Cracking the Egyptian Code) and Michael Ventris (The Man Who Deciphered Linear B); and of the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore (The Myriad-Minded Man) and the Indian film director Satyajit Ray (The Inner Eye). His most recent books, The Indus: Lost Civilizations, Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization, and Einstein on the Run: How Britain Saved the World's Greatest Scientist, combine his interest in archaeology, history, India and science. He also writes on these subjects for leading magazines and newspapers, such as Nature and The Financial Times.

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From the wave theory of light to the secrets of hieroglyphics

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2013

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This is an exceptionally well-written biography of Thomas Young, a man with an encyclopedic mind who made major contributions to physics, engineering, physiology and linguistics. Andrew Robinson has a fluent style that is always easy to follow; it is the kind of book that is hard to put down for anyone interested in history or biography. As other reviewers have noted and Robinson mentions several times, there was a constant tension in Young's life between his incredible learning abilities in so many fields and his desire to contribute something substantial to science and human progress. He himself concluded near the end of his life that there is a role for those who initiate inquiries but who may not be completely dedicated to one area. Such a person opens doors for future researchers. Given the explosion and depth of knowledge in so many fields since his time, it is a role that would be impossible to fill in the modern world.

Robinson details Young's many achievements and the processes he used to get there and he also gives many examples of the criticisms made of Young and his work. Probably the most famous work of Young's is the two slit experiment in physics that shows what was (and still is) one of the most convincing proofs of the wave character of light. But, as in so many other areas, Young never followed up on that experiment. He found so many aspects of knowledge fascinating that he could not give up other intellectual interests to pursue any particular one in depth. His work on elasticity, the functioning of the eye, and the polarization of light established important foundational work in engineering and optics. More amazing then is that he had the first major insights in deciphering the Rosetta Stone. Champollion's eventual breakthrough relied on Young's work but Young never received the credit he deserves for this critical leap in our understanding of Egypt. The one thing he most consistently wanted in his life was to be a successful physician but, while he did establish a mildly successful practice, he eventually gave that up also. Young was by all indications a man not driven to gain external honors or status. He seems to have been what we might call today a "genuine" human being who knew his enormous strengths but also his weaknesses. His self-reflections are rare in history for someone with his talents. Robinson paints a sympathetic yet honest portrait of the last of the great polymaths.

This is quite simply a thoroughly enjoyable read. For anyone interested in the history of science, I highly recommend the book. You will both enjoy the writing itself and the life of this unusual 19th century version of a Renaissance man.

7 people found this helpful

It Ain't Easy Knowing Everything...

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2008

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...and those who do often feel underappreciated by those who don't. Back in my rural childhood, people used "know-it-all" as a painful insult. Not on me, you understand, cuz the one thing I knew best was to keep my mouth shut and my nose in a book.

Author Andrew Robinson has organized this biography of polymath Thomas Young around the hypothesis that Young was and has been underappreciated precisely because of the diversity of his interests and the near-impossibility of anybody knowing enough to evaluate his contributions to so many different fields of knowledge. Young himself was not a boastful man; he was quite self-conscious about his propensity to switch intellectual directions, and quite modest about what he didn't know and didn't choose to learn. At a time in his life when much of his income came from writing articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica, he turned down commissions to write about subjects outside his knowledge, stone-cutting for one. But the list of his articles in the EB shows that he in fact wrote on a vast array of subjects, from bridge-building to hieroglyphics. He was easily the most prolific single contributor.

Young's most enduring contributions to knowledge - and after all, what you know is less important than what you contribute to humanity's stock of knowledge - were in the disparate fields of optics and Egyptology. His 'proving Newton wrong' refers to his demonstration that light behaves as a transverse wave rather than a 'corpuscle' as Newton insisted. Young's most impressive series of experiments concerned the anatomy and function of the eye - often risking his own eyes in the bizarre procedures available to the laboratory techniques of his era.

Robinson clearly regards his subject as a significant figure in our intellectual history who remains underappreciated. Young's personal life and his odd personality become the chief subjects of this biography, though the author analyzes Young's actual accomplishments in science clearly enough. The book falls short, not on content, but on style and organization. Frankly, when Robinson suggests that Young's writing style was less than captivating, I begin to see why the author is enamored of his subject. The book is repetitive at times, and hopscotches around Young's career so that it's easy to lose track of what-happened-in-what-order-and-when.

I have to say that, if he were alive today, Thomas Young would make a fine candidate for Vice-President. Someone who knows almost everything is surely preferable to someone who knows almost nothing except how to skin a moose.

10 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2018

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rekindles faith in the real potential of humans

One person found this helpful

Has its moments

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2016

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A good friend recommended this book. We had both greatly enjoyed THE AGE OF WONDER, and although he didn't come out and say it, I was hoping for something along those lines--a window into science as it progressed two hundred-plus years ago. This book is more of a biography. There's a bit too much about Thomas Young's apartment searches.

There's more than I ever thought there was to the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. That part was great. True to form, Young spread himself a bit thin here (the author says so), and history doesn't give him fair credit.

In their efforts to understand how the eye works--specifically to measure its size in order to get an idea of focal lengths and such--Young and even Isaac Newton poked pointy things around the sides of their eyeballs. Eww.

The epigraph for Chapter 12 has a great quote, from Thomas Young himself: "The longer a person has lived the less he gains by reading, and the more likely he is to forget what he has read and learnt of old; and the only remedy that I know of is to write upon every subject that he wishes to understand, even if he burns what he has written."

It's a reason to write Amazon reviews. :-)

9 people found this helpful

Best to pass this book by

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2017

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This is an awful biography. The author has little command of the science, and even worse, does next to nothing to give us a picture of the man, Thomas Young. Robinson inserts quotations ad nauseam. Don't waste your time.

Proud Antivaxxer

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2017

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Thank You!!

Jose I. Miranda

Read only if you are the last man

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2012

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Hi:
This book was the harder reading, ever. It was truly a pain to read it. There are books that you would like not to finish and books that you can’t wait to finish. This book is in the latter case. Don’t buy it!

Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

"The mechanically inclined Young was not convinced."

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 10, 2019

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Great read, I learned about Thomas Young as much as I learned about myself. This book quotes from Young himself, other biographers and various authors, on top of the author's opinions and interpretations. The parts on Egyptology are fascinating. I only regret the use of the word 'polymath' which I hate.

Doctor Malc

An interesting man reduced to dullness.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2015

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I was particularly interested in Thomas Young and had tried to find a biography. This account manages to make the life of an interesting man quite dull, and I was actually quite glad when I finished the book. Poorly written, I'm afraid, but seems to be the only available biography.

2 people found this helpful

Columbus

A fine biography.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 20, 2013

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Robinson hits the spot, as usual: informative, surprising, a pleasant read. (Amazon now tells me I need to write 9 more words to finish this review, so I have added this sentence, which contains 24.)

4 people found this helpful

Angelotta

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2017

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Good to find this book great service.

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