The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, the Anonymous Genius Who Proved Newton Wrong and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Surprising Feats

This is more an overview than a complete biography. Thomas Young was, depending on your viewpoint, a genius who applied his talents to anything and everything, or a dilettante who couldn't focus on a single subject. The truth, as ever, is probably somewhere in the middle. I'd heard of him in science, having covered Young's slits and Young's modulus in various physics courses as a student. Anyone with one important phenomena to his name, let alone two, clearly had some skills. And that's not the extent of his discoveries. He first proposed the three colour sensor theory of vision which wasn't proven until the mid 20th century. He was also a linguist and spoke multiple languages which contributed to his early breakthroughs in translating show more Egyptian hieroglyphs. Trouble is that he wasn't necessarily his own best promotor. His writing is somewhat convoluted (as was the style of tie time) and it is not always clear if he had actually performed the experiment, or merely thought his way through it. There are mixed messages as well. He was trying to set up as a doctor, so most of his early publications were anonymous, but then he tended to take exception to not being credited by later work (Champollion being the most notable example). At the end of this he remains a bit of an enigma. It spends quite a lot of time on his technical achievement and almost none on his family, his poor wife barely gets a look in. I don't feel like I know the subject much more although I know more about the subject. I think that the age of people able to become an expert in multiple broad fields has gone - and I think that's a shame in some ways. show less

An unremarkable biography of a remarkable man. The subject is fascinating, but Robinson's writing isn't strong and the repeated cross references to topics covered elsewhere in the book got very annoying.

I actually finished this book. At least, I remember moving the bookmark further and further and then not needing it anymore. This actually happened at least a year ago, and all I remember about "what I learned from this book" is that Thomas Young was smart (although I may only be recalling the title) and that the first few chapters were interesting.