The Last Man Who Knew Everything

by Andrew Robinson

No one has given the extraordinary Thomas Young the all-round examination he so richly deserves until now. Celebrated biographer Andrew Robinson tells the rich and engrossing story of a modest hero who solved mystery after mystery in the face of ridicule and rejection, and cared less about what others thought of him than for the joys of an unbridled pursuit of knowledge.

Genres: Biography, History, Science, Nonfiction, History Of Science, Biography Memoir, British Literature

304 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 2005

About the author

(William) Andrew Coulthard Robinson is a British author and former newspaper editor.

Andrew Robinson was educated at the Dragon School, Eton College where he was a King's Scholar, University College, Oxford where he read Chemistry and finally the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He is the son of Neville Robinson, an Oxford physicist.

Robinson first visited India in 1975 and has been a devotee of the country's culture ever since, in particular the Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore and the Bengali film director Satyajit Ray. He has authored many books and articles. Until 2006, he was the Literary Editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement<?em>. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.

He is based in London and is now a full-time writer.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Robinson did a great job in trying to make an elephant palatable to a garter snake; unfortunately, unless you're a polymath yourself, you're not going to *get* the whole book.

This is also a very dry book, but, seriously, it's incredibly difficult to make physics sexy. Not to mention the task of condensing the huge scope of Young's knowledge into 239 pages.

Robinson did answer the primary question I had before reading the book:
If Thomas Young was so brilliant, than why wasn't he as famous as Einstein or Leonardo Di Vinci?

The answer seems to have been: Because Young had a naive belief that his fellow scholars held the same moral codes as himself (ie: that one should be more interested in advancing knowledge for all rather than personal glory), he had a tendency to be easily distracted from subject to subject (Young admitted that his own ambition lay always more in the direction of "acute suggestion" than "experimental illustration") and his public lectures seemed to have been drier than dust.

That having been said, Thomas Young was *brilliant*. The sheer scope of his curiosity, knowledge, and intuitive genius over dozens of fields (His article contributions to the Encyclopaedia Britannica were the following subjects: alphabet, annuities, capillary action, cohesion, color, dew, Egypt, eye, focus, friction, halo, hieroglyphic, hydraulics, motion, resistance, ship, sound, strength, tides, and waves. Not only that, but he contributed numerous biographies of scientists and mathematicians to the Encyclopaedia as well) makes a coherent biography for the layman almost impossible.

I freely admit to skimming through Chapters 5 and 7 (Young's breakthroughs in light and visions are simply too technical for me to understand), and focusing more on the chapters on hieroglyphics and Young's personal life.

And if you parse out the technical aspects of the book, this is a fascinating look into the world of academia, the preference of broad curiosity vs. narrow specialization in subject fields, and how much medicine and physics has evolved since the 1700s.

This is one of those books that I plan to re-read every couple of years or so; as my personal knowledge grows, I hope to be able to understand Young's brilliance that much more.

[Grumpus · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has been on my "to read" list for quite a while. I am big into history and science and the idea of learning about the life of this polymath was definitely captivating.

I don't think I can add anything more to the comments Sam wrote about this book here on 05/02/07. While I did read them prior to buying the book I thought they were exaggerated and it couldn't be that bad, but I too, after reading less than half the book, wanted to "put my eyes out".

I believe Thomas Young was an interesting man and this biography would have been much more interesting and readable had not all the technical documentation been in the way. I'll be the first to admit that it may simply be this book was written above me. I'll also say it was well sourced and had many snippets of his writings and those of others from the time but that was my gravamen as the majority of these were incomprehensible. I further believe the author realized that this would be the reader's interpretation as he continually followed these references with comments such as, "In other words…"

I am not a writer but maybe these passages should have simply been references or footnotes and not included in the main text. They slowed the book down tremendously for me.

Again, I concur with and give kudos to Sam's review and his recommendation that this book is for "People REALLY into science". Yes, "REALLY", in all CAPS as I am knowledgeable in science but this book was well beyond my comprehension.

[Lynne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love biographies and the history of science, but I couldn't even finish this book. Having never heard of Thomas Young before this, I found the introductory chapters were interesting, but the writing did me in after 100 pages. It's less a book than a long string of connected passages from primary sources. I am all for citing one's sources, but this was ridiculous. I don't think the author ever wrote even two pages without a paragraph long quotation (usually there were two or three passages every two pages!)

[Nate Bate · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I was reading this book, my reaction to it was mixed. I think Andrew Robinson did a good job in the introduction explaining why writing a biography of Thomas Young was so difficult. And so, I think that needs to be factored into understanding my responses as I read the book. However, to some degree I wonder if Robinson's reasoning was more of an excuse than a substantive reason. I can't say for sure because this is the only book I have read on Thomas Young. What is clear to me is that this book is not the same caliber of biographical work that I am used to.

As far as biographies go, this is a shorter one. So much about Thomas Young was left unsaid. What increases this mystery is the disproportionate amount of contributions across many different fields of study in which Thomas Young made critical contributions to. On the negative side of my mixed reactions is the fact that there is a lot of focus on the details about contributions that Thomas Young made. I was less interested in these details and more interested in the fabric of who Thomas Young was. My theory is that Robinson, because he could not give the details of who Young was, he filled in more details about what he contributed. What I did find interesting was the significant amount of controversy and conflict that Young was constantly involved in, and Robinson does a good job looking at the details of those.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is a great biography. It gets a little technical at times, but given the book's subject, the genius Thomas Young, it has to be somewhat technical.

I have to admit, before reading this book, the word "polymath" was not in my vocabulary. However, now that it is I'll probably have little use for it. And that is because there are so few polymaths (that is, geniuses in several fields) around.

As I read this biography, I kept thinking of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. I think he was a true polymath, excelling in poetry and medicine.

Young was a key figure in deciphering the rosetta stone, introduced a new theroy of light, was a physician, an early Epyptologist, and much more.

If you want to learn about a fascinating individual, this book is for you!

Best wishes!

--John

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked learning about him, but this maybe the worst biography of anyone I've ever read. Granted I have read very few, so maybe Biographies aren't my thing, which is entirely possible, and the fact that this Polymath is probably someone who is hard to explain, but man, I was wanting to put my eyes out, ironic really, for a good half of the book.
The person of Thomas Young though, man, I want to be him.

[Raymonds009 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent study of a man whose wide ranging interests led him to examine so many different areas of knowledge that people were either jealous or ridiculed him as too far reaching. This later estimation is hard to hold, however, due to the volumes of studies he produced and the lectures he gave and boards that he served on. All of these records reveal a fascinating character who should be better known today. Hip, hip hooray.

[DAJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Young hasn't been written about as one might expect, considering the size of his achievements. To name only the most important feats, Young established the wave theory of light, laid the foundations for understanding how vision works, made some crucial steps in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and largely deciphered the Egyptian demotic script. By spreading his efforts across so many intellectual fields, he left each field to be dominated by other contemporaries who became better known than he did. Moreover, few people write about him extensively because few have the range of knowledge needed to evaluate his work in each field. Robinson had already written lucidly about physics and the decipherment of unknown scripts by the time he started on this book, but even he admits feeling rather daunted by the task.

Robinson is pretty good at explaining the science behind Young's discoveries, and he's very good at laying out what was already known in Young's day and how Young changed the scientific fields he participated in. Robinson is especially interested in how discoveries are made and the types of personalities that produce them, so he makes informative comparisons between Young and other intellectual figures, especially Humphrey Davy and, of course, Jean-François Champollion, whose personality and approach to his work were the polar opposite of Young's. (However, Robinson's portrayal of Young's dispassionate personality may be somewhat exaggerated. I'm thinking particularly of a snide and bigoted remark by Young about Frenchmen and Egyptians, which is quoted by Lesley and Roy Adkins in The Keys of Egypt, that proves Young was not above pettiness or prejudice.)

Because of the contrast between the two scholars, this biography of Young makes for a good companion piece to Robinson's biography of Champollion, Cracking the Egyptian Code. But I don't find this book as compelling as that one, and I don't think it's just my Egyptological bias talking. For all Robinson's admiration of Young, the book feels kind of dry. Perhaps it's Robinson's overuse of quotations, with their circuitous 19th-century prose, or perhaps it's just the nature of Young's character and the course of his life. Young was low on emotion, and though intellectual curiosity served as a substitute driving force in his life, his flitting from subject to subject doesn't make for a very compelling narrative; Robinson himself acknowledges as much. Champollion's single-minded drive to understand ancient Egypt, punctuated by dramatic breakthroughs, simply makes for a better story, which is one of the reasons why Young is so often neglected.

[T.K. Flor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read The Last Man Who Knew Everything with considerable interest. The writing is often dry, and the biographer shies away from gossip (for example, he offers only broad hints about matrimonial problems in Young's childless marriage), yet the book provides plenty of background about the era and gives context to Young's career and to the choices he made in his scientific pursuits.

Young made notable contributions to the fields of physics, physiology and Egyptology. A considerable part of the biography is devoted to his contribution to “the theory of light and colors” which Young himself considered “to be of more importance than all I have ever done, or ever shall do besides.” For me, the most interesting part was how Young came up with the famous double-slit experiment, which demonstrated, in the early nineteenth century, the wave behavior of light.

[Selda Nayir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Type of course: Main course

If anyone ever looked at the stress-strain curved and calculated young modulus, he/she has actually briefly touched Thomas Young. He lived in the mid-1800 and had diverse fields of interest from optics, and physiology, to linguistics. It is very interesting to command all of the interests with scientific rigor and stick with them until the labor gave its fruit. Those interests did not actually make him a recluse, on the contrary, he was an active part of society and a prominent public figure who advocated for scientific progress. He also worked as a secretary of the Board of Longitude until its controversial abolishment in 1828 when he had a word duel with reformist Airy who was apparently against Thomas' regime. It is a nice book, I would suggest it to whom enjoy reading not-too-distant history

[Carl Johnson]

Though not a household name, British polymath Thomas Young (1773–1829) was responsible for an astonishing assortment of discoveries: he discovered that the focal point of the eye is controlled by changing the shape of the lens and proposed that color perception involves combinations of red, green and blue; he developed the double-slit experiment that established the wave theory of light and proposed that light waves oscillation at right angles to the direction of travel; he described the axial elasticity of solids ("Young's Modulus") as equal to applied axial force ("stress") divided by degree of deformation ("strain"); he estimated the size of the water molecule with surprising accuracy based on his study of capillary action and the surface tension of liquids; and he helped decipher the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt.

[Wendy Capron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This should have been a fascinating book, given the subject, but instead the best part was the introduction. Part of the problem was that Robinson is repetitive (George Peacock was cited 32 times and almost every time, we were reminded that he was Young's biographer, a tutor at Cambridge and/or the Lowndean professor of astronomy - in a 240 page book, I think most of us can remember that after the first couple of reminders.) Also, way too many teasers - "we'll discuss this in more detail later", "the full tale will be told in Chapter 15", etc. If you have to use that technique so much, there's something wrong with the organization of your book. Either do a chronology or do it by subject, but this is a mishmash of the two that was hard to follow and easy to lose interest in.

[Av Ferzair Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am sure Thomas Young was a fascinating man. But this book, impossible as it is to report the life of a polymath, is not. Though no fault of this belongs to the author, he had researched deep and well about it but it gets technical and dry, I had to push myself to read just to finish this book instead of enjoying what could have been an interesting biography about the man who proved Newton wrong, inter alia, and whatever was said about him, his real passion and exploring on knowledge is itself remarkable , although it could be say God given but his tenacity was his own.

[Sean Reeves · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read, the author has done his best to bring the subject of his biography to life. However, there is such scant information regarding Thomas Young's personal life that a sense of who he was never emerges. Nonetheless, his accomplishments are clearly explained and organised and that's perhaps the best that can be accomplished by a biographer without venturing into historical fiction.

[Kayla Montgomery · Rating 3 out of 5]

His mind was brilliant and his contributions very varied and remarkable. But, a lot of the science was not my interest. I found the social aspects, the society embracing or rejecting the polymath's thinking and the battles between the scientists much more fun to read. So, I admit, I skimmed parts but got immersed in others. Too bad he never got to establish his medical practice the way he wanted it.

[Michael Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent biography of a multi-talented man: Physicist, medical doctor, Egyptologist, he developed a wave theory of light, deciphered the Rosetta stone, and contributed original ideas to a number of scientific disciplines. A significant portion of the text is highly technical, but it's interesting and you can skip the hard parts if you want to.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting bio of someone I had never heard of and an excellent history of his times.

[Sarah Jowett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was in my dads stuff after he died... with everything going on, i got distracted with something else and lost interest

[Georgie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject- Thomas young - is fascinating but the writing… mha. Boring, all over the place, reads like bits and pieces put together.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading this book hoping it would be much more interesting than it turned out to be. Despite his reputation for being a dilettante Young was a prodigy and made many contributions to modern science and the study of ancient languages. Unfortunately the author presents his personal history is a very dry way that drags on and on and makes the subject sound very boring. The two sections on the rivalry between Young and Champollion over the decipherment of hieroglyphs were an especial attraction to me and very nearly contradict each other. Even though the first definitely falls on the side of the argument of Young having been snubbed over his minimal contributions, the second portrays Champollion rendering every aid to Young's later decipherment of Demotic (or 'enchorial'). There's also the issue that "The Last Man Who Knew Everything" is generally applied to Athanasius Kircher, which could be confusing to some and definitely messes with Google search results. In all the book makes Thomas Young sound like an asocial physician who stumbled from one amazing discovery to another, never quite finishing anything, and exactly the sort of uninvolved dilettante he's often accused of being.

[Joseph Gowen · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you have ever taken a physical science or optics class, you have learned about the wave-particle duality of light. Isaac Newton was the one that convinced everyone that light was a particle, and Thomas Young was the one who performed the elegant experiment that showed light waves interfered with each other just like sound waves. Most people don't remember the name "Thomas Young" unfortunately, but this guy was seriously like Michaelangelo. There really wasn't any area of study he couldn't excel at if he chose to.

[Sue Pit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow but instructive read about a not well known but brilliant man named Thomas Young (1773-1829). He pioneered many great revelations including that light is a wave (and transverse ( with Fresnel)); the three color theory of vision; and stemming from his love of language, laid the groundwork for deciphering the Rosetta Stone (but went further in translating demotic script, that being the ancient common Egyptian script as opposed to hieroglyphs (manuscript script)). His astounding depth and breadth of interests/ideas are the basis for the book's title.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't resist this title: I thought I'd check out the competition....

This book was a humbling experience, and would be, I think, fo anyone that considers themselves smart/intellectual/gifted/etc. The story of Thomas Young, who was not only highly intelligent, but also spent an amazing lifetime doing amazing things with his gifts. Frankly, compared to this guy, Einstein was a schmuck with a head for figures.

[Jrobertus · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a biography of the early 19th century polymath Thomas Young. He is well known for his work in physics (Young's modulus) and in optics. What I did not know was his accomplishments as a linguist and Egyptologist. His work laid the basis for the deciphering of hieroglyphics. The narrative, however, is not all that inspiring so this interesting story is not all that engaging.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I returned this book to the library without renewing or finishing it. It had great promise and normally it is a subject matter I would love, but it would seem like the socially-inept ways and boring tendancies of the great Thomas Young have fatally flawed his biography as well. I wish I could give this book 1.5 stars because I didn't like it but I really wanted to like it.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to give this book more stars since I liked reading about
this most interesting man. The book was rather technical and not much
biographical. I did learn a few physics facts I didn't know before, truthfully, I don't think i knew any. Glad I read it anyway, too bad
we are so poorly educated in the history of science.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only tiny fault I found with this book was the discontinuity caused by composing the chapters by subject which resulted in a somewhat un-chronological biography. However this should be overlooked I suppose, as it results in more fully realized treatments of the areas of Dr. Young's interests and contributions.

[Mangoo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short introduction to Thomas Young, eclectic and highly talented genius less known than he would deserve. The text is rich in citations of letters and writings of Young himself, yet it proves poor and not deep enough to give a lasting impression of the breadth of his personality.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Young was indeed a remarkable man. The title a bit too catchy, but it made me buy the book. He was a physician, he challenged Newton and made first steps in deciphering the Rosetta Stone. (There is a book on Leibniz with the same title. And a bit more appropriate.)