May/June 2016
23
1. Some biographers have speculated that the
house was too crowded and that Thomas, as the
eldest, was the logical one to leave. However, in
that Quaker community, large families were the
rule, the house was large, and there were ample
servants to care for the children and more than
enough money to support them. There must have
been some other reason for his departure.
HISTORICAL
T
he principal difficulty with writing
a biography usually is securing
enough information to put together
more than a snapshot of the subject’s life.
Just the opposite is the case with Thomas
Young. The amount of information about
him and his work is overwhelming. Every
physicist from Einstein to Fresnel has
written about him. J.Z. Young of London
University has called him the father of
modern neurophysiology.
Young is worth chapters in books on
Egyptology, optics, mechanics, insurance,
annuities, linguistics, engineering, color,
and even music. He was a polymath of
enormous genius, and he had a wider
range of creative learning than any
Englishman in history. To do a biography
worthy of him and his theories in a journal-
length article is a daunting task. Consider
this little more than a superficial synopsis
of an unusual life.
It would seem a man of this background
should be a well-known figure. However,
among physicians today, only a few
ophthalmologists are familiar with his
name and—amazingly—he was never a
successful physician.
Thomas Young was born in the village of
Milverton, Somerset County, Southwest
England, on June 13, 1773, into a strict
Quaker family of moderately wealthy
merchants. His father, Thomas, was a
cloth merchant and banker. His mother,
Sarah, was also the daughter of a Milverton
merchant. He was the eldest of 10 siblings.
For reasons that have never been clarified,
Young was sent away to live with his
maternal grandfather, Robert Davis, at a
very young age.
1
For the rest of his life, he
spent a total of less than 10 months living
with his parents. He was very fond of his
grandfather, however, and the arrangement
seems to have been a happy one for him.
His grandfather encouraged his education,
and by all accounts Young was reading
fluently by age 2. By age 4, when he started
at the village school, he had read the bible
twice and had memorized poems in Latin
and read classic novels. The village school
was a poor match for the brilliant little
boy, and Young soon left for a series of
private tutors and trials at boarding schools.
He finally ended up in Mr. Thompson’s
school in Dorsetshire, which appears to
have been a good fit. He studied the Greek
and Latin classics and became fluent in
French, Italian, and Hebrew. The school
offered only elementary mathematics and
no science, but one of the faculty, Josiah
Jeffery, gave Young books on both subjects
and helped him grind lenses for telescopes
and microscopes. Later, Jeffery taught him
to grind pigments and to draw and paint.
At age 13, Young left school and began
studying on his own. He soon became
fluent in Arabic and Farsi. Young’s father
gave him Priestley’s book on air, and he
began studying chemistry. With the help of
a neighbor who was a surveyor, Young began
using mathematical tables and became
proficient with the surveyor’s instruments
and calculations. He began studying botany
with his homemade microscope and then
got interested in optics.
In 1787, Young was sent to the wealthy
banking and brewing Berkley family as a
sort of combination tutor and companion
for their grandson, Hudson Gurney.
Although Gurney was two years Young’s
junior, the two became lifelong friends. In
addition to tutoring Gurney, Young did
extensive work on his own in the sciences
and mathematics.
After about a year with the Berkley family,
Young began developing symptoms of
tuberculosis. This brought him to the
attention of his great-uncle, Dr. Richard
The Man Who
Knew Everything
With interests as varied as mortality
rates, astigmatism, and earthquakes,
Thomas Young (1773–1829) was
a consummate dabbler.
By Fillmore Buckner, MD
