The Centenary of the Death of Thomas Young Source: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan., 1930), pp. 92-95 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/14716 . Accessed: 01/05/2014 10:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Scientific Monthly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.78.38 on Thu, 1 May 2014 10:21:22 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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The Centenary of the Death of Thomas YoungSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan., 1930), pp. 92-95Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/14716 .
Accessed: 01/05/2014 10:21
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to The Scientific Monthly.
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This content downloaded from 62.122.78.38 on Thu, 1 May 2014 10:21:22 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
four thousand people. The exhibits of the association will occupy the base- ment, and the beautiful lounge, adjoin- ing the auditorium and having easy ac- cess to the basement, will be used for the association reception.
The local committee has tenaciously held to the idea of centralizing the meeting so that all who attend will have the opportunity of seeing other workers in their fields and hearing a diversified program. There are a few exceptions, however, to this arrangement, notably part of the program of Section G- Botany, will be at Iowa State College, located thirty-seven miles north of Des Moines, and Section D-Astronomy, will hold an afternoon session at the
Drake lJniversity Alunicipal Observa- tory, in the western part of Des Moines.
A new departure for the Des AMoines meeting is a number of non-technical lectures for the general public and the school pupils. It is hoped that this will increase popular interest in science bv allowing the leaders and men of scien- tific accomplishment an opportunity to disseminate the results of science to the general public and the younger genera- tion who will carry on the work of the association. Extra-mural lectures have been arranged in some of the leading cities of the state, affording those who can not attend the meeting an oppor- tunity to become familiar with the work of the association.
THE CENTENARY OF THE DEATH OF THOMAS YOUNG' ONE hundred years ago there died in
London one of the most versatile men of all time, Thomas Young, M.D., F.R.S., one of the eight ioreign associates of the National Institute of France.
His parents were Quakers, and he maintained throughout life strict ad- herence to the moral principles of that sect, though he relinquished the external forms as unimportant and a hindrance to social contacts. His maternal great uncle, Dr. Richard Brocklesby, was a leadinig London physician. When his nephew was eighteen years old the doctor in-troduced him to the inner circles of social and literary metropolitan lif e. His social success was immediate, and he remained to the end of his life a brilliant member of London society. He studied medicine at London, Edinburgh, G6t- tingan and Cambridge, commencing p)ractice rather late in life. His uncle at his death left him his town house with his library and paintings and a consider-
1 A more extended paper, read before the Thomas Young Memorial Meeting of the Optical Society of America at Ithaca, New York, Octo- b2i' 24, 1929, will be publislhed in the Joutrnal of the Optical Society of America.
able fortune in money. He became physician to St. George's Hospital, a post which he held throughout his life.
During the first two years after com- mencing practice in London he was pro- fessor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution. The lectures he delivered there were published in 1807 in two large folio volumes which were for years a standard work.
As a boy he was unusually bright, hav- ing learned to read by the age of two years. He had a remarkable memory and great aptitude for learning lan- guages which he mastered with precision. At the age of 'ourteen, oni being asked, probably in a patronizing manner, by one of his uncle's friends to write for him a copy exhibiting his excellence in penmanship, he administered a gentle rebuke by writing in excellent style a copy in thirteen different languages! Before he was twenty-one he had pro- duced a work on the eye which resulted in his election to fellowship in the Royal Society.
He was fond of athletic sports, par- ticularly of equitation, in which he ex-
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celled, and was aii accomplished musician and art critic. Although an excellent physician and writer of medical works, he is best known for his work in physiol- ogy and in physics. He made a series of remarkable measurements of the eye and founded the theory of color vision later extended by Helmholtz and held in high regard to the present time. He applied his talents to an investigation of the dy- namics of the circulation with excellent result. The student of elementary phys- ics soon learns of Young's MIodulus of elasticity, but he is best known for hav- ing revived the undulatory theory of light and for devising crucial experi- ments on diffraction in support of this theory. The theory of these experiments he worked out with consummate skill.
Hle was frequently asked to serve on commissions appointed by the govern- ment to investigate and report upon scientific questiolns of public importance, and for many years he was superinten- dent of the Nautical Almanac and secre- tary of the Board of Longitude. Hle wrote learned treatises on the theory of tides and on correction of ships' com- tary of the Board of Longitude. He was the inventor of the revolving drum chronograph still in universal use. At the request of one of the large life in- surance companies he undertook exten- sive actuarial studies.
An achievement wlhich illustrates par- ticularly well his remarkable versatility, because so far removed from his better- known scientific activities, was the dis- covery of the key to the interpretation of the Egyptian sacred characters or hicero- glyphies. Visitors to the British Mu-
seum may still see the famous Rosetta Stone on which is engraved a proclama- tion written in Greek, in Coptic and in hieroglyphics. It might seem an easy matter to translate a passage accom- panied by two ready-made translations, but the hieroglyphics are a species of picture-writing, and it was not then known what language, if any, they rep- resented. Young determined that they had in certain circumstances phonetic values and laid the foundation for their more complete understanding.
Of all his successors the one best quali- fied to pass upon his merit was Hermann von Helmhloltz, himself famous as physi- cian, physiologist, mathematician and physicist. In his popular lecture on vision Helmholtz says:
lIe was one of the most keelnly ilntellectual men that has ever lived, but he had the mis- fortune that his sagacity too far surpassed that of his contemporaries. They were amazed at him, but could lnot generally follow the keen flights of his combinations, and so the bulk of his most important thoughts remained buried and forgotten in the great folios of the Royal Society of Lolndoln until a later generation, by gradual progress, rediscovered his discoveries and satisfied itself of the correctlness and con- vincilng power of his conclusions.
Athlete, musician, connoisseur of art, classical and oriental scholar, mathema- tician, actuary, physicist, physiologist, physician; at the end of fifty-six years of incredible activity, when facing the end, lhe appraised his life, and it hardly surpiises us to learn that he found in its record nothing to regret.
HORATiO B. WILLIAMS D)EPARTATEINT OF PHIYSIOLOGY,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YOPRK
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THE INSTITUTE OF HUMAN RELATIONS AT YALE UNIVERSITY
WITH the opening of the academic year at Yale University, marked prog- ress in the development of the Institute of Human Relations is reported. The institute is to be a center for research in biology, psychology and sociology. All members of the staff will also hold ap- pointments in the fundamental depart- ments of instruction, so that the institute will be closely knit to the university as a whole and will serve as a means of cor- relating the work in the various pure and applied fields of science dealing with human life. Its primary purpose is in fact the stimulation of cooperative re- search so that the barriers which have arbitrarily separated related disciplines may be broken down. It is believed that many impediments to progress in the understanding of human conduct may thus be removed. Through the close affiliation of the institute with the pro- fessional schools, such as medicine, law and religion, it is believed that the train-
ing of men in these fields may be broadened.
A number of university appointments bearing on the work of the institute have already been made. Dr. William Healy and Dr. Augusta F. Bronner will com- mence this year a study of the family factors in delinquency. In Boston, New Haven and Detroit, groups of families, members of which have been in contact with the juvenile courts, will provide the material for the study.
Dr. Edward C. Streeter, who has been appointed visiting professor of the his- tory of medicine in the Yale School of Medicine, will take part in a broad study of medical organization. Dr. Walton H. Hamilton, of the Yale School of Law, will supervise the eco- nomic aspects of this study which has been authorized by the American Medi- cal Association.
Dr. Edgar Van Norman Emery, for- mer chief of the Los Angeles child
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