| A course of lectures on natural philosophy and the mechanical arts | |
| 1807 |  |
| Thomas Young(1773-1829) | |
|
Young, a physician, physicist and an Egyptologist, was a brilliant scholar and scientist, who could be called the last of the universalists. Acknowledged at the age of 20, he was asked to read his famous paper on vision to the Royal Society. All the lectures delivered by Young at this royal institution, with the exception of a few published in periodicals, were published in this work for the first time together with the beautiful engravings done by Josef Skelton. These lectures constituted his investigations, researches and the results of his major contributions which included the first description of Astigmatism, the first use of the term “energy”, as the product of a body’s mass multiplied times the square of its velocity (F= mv2), the establishment of the wave theory of light in support of Huygens, Young’s theory of tides, etc. There are two lectures on electricity, one on magnetism, and a lecture on elasticity in which Young introduced the term “modules” and established a definition which is generally used today. These lectures are now considered the most complete and most accurate studies in the field of physics at that time. It is no wonder then that Tschernin called Young “the father of physiological optics”, and Helmholtz, who later investigated the same theories, considered Young to be “one of the most clear-sighted men who have ever lived”. |
