Thomas Young (nonfiction)

Thomas Young.

Thomas Young (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) was an English polymath and physician.

Young made notable scientific contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology. He "made a number of original and insightful innovations" in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs (specifically the Rosetta Stone) before Jean-François Champollion eventually expanded on his work.

In Young's own judgment, of his many achievements the most important was to establish the wave theory of light. To do so, he had to overcome the century-old view, expressed in the venerable Isaac Newton's Opticks, that light is a particle. Nevertheless, in the early-19th century Young put forth a number of theoretical reasons supporting the wave theory of light, and he developed two enduring demonstrations to support this viewpoint. With the ripple tank he demonstrated the idea of interference in the context of water waves. With the Young's interference experiment, or double-slit experiment, he demonstrated interference in the context of light as a wave.

He was mentioned by, among others, William Herschel, Hermann von Helmholtz, James Clerk Maxwell, and Albert Einstein.

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Albert Einstein (nonfiction)
• Hermann von Helmholtz (nonfiction)
• Isaac Newton (nonfiction)
• James Clerk Maxwell (nonfiction)
• William Herschel (nonfiction)

External links:

• Thomas Young (scientist) @ Wikipedia