I’ve always been a fan of polymaths. I find it inspiring to read about people who leap from field to field, excelling in each. Franklin, Leonardo… and now Thomas Young.
This book chronicles the life of Thomas Young, who began the work on deciphering the Rosetta Stone, wrote on the particle/wave nature of light, pioneered research on the nature of the eye, and specified what came to be known as “Young’s Modulus of elasticty”, a way to calculate compression or extension of materials under stress. Because he didn’t want his patients (he was also a doctor) to know how diverse his interests were, he did much of his early research anonymously.
The author shares my interest in these types of people. He has written previous books on Albert Einstein, Michael Ventris, and Rabindranath Tagore. He say in the preface that it is tough, as a biographer, to write about someone with such a wide range of interests and expertise. How can one person begin to scratch the surface on so many topics?
Robinson attempts to solve this dilemma by providing a relatively light and non-exhaustive treatment of each of Young’s major works, an introduction rather than a full biography, as he puts it. The book is arranged in a loose chronological order, and each chapter focuses on a particular subject. This makes the narrative somewhat harder to follow, as there is some unavoidable jumping around in time, but does make it easier to present needed background information to explain the context of his work.
Each section alone could provide the basis for its own book, and Robinson knows it. the 1855 biography of Young by G. Peacock is almost 500 pages, with no diagrams or illustrations. Robinson’s book is significantly shorter, and repeated claims to be providing only the barest elements of Young’s life.
I found this book to be an interesting, though not particularly engaging read. This may be more a fault of my own than the authors, because I prefer works with a stronger narrative, and he chose not to use such a structure in this book. The book made me want to find out more about the somewhat unknown Thomas Young, and in that regard can be regarded as a success. I shall also attempt to track down Robinson’s book on R. Tagore, and see how that is.
The Sum-up: Easy to read in short sections, hard to read all at once. Episodic treatment of a possibly epic life.
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