THOMAS YOUNG

EARLY YEARS

• Parents below middle class
• School bored him
• Infant prodigy

STARTING OUT

• Medical school
• Set up medical practice
• Made discovery regarding lens of the eye
• Discovered cause of astigmatism in 1801

LIGHT STUDY

• Established two theories
• Double-slit experiment
• Used wave nature of light to explain colors in thin films (bubbles)
• 1817: proposed light waves are transverse not longitudinal

LIGHT STUDY (CONT.)

• His work wasn't accepted because it opposed Newton
• French physicists helped his work become accepted in Europe

OPTICS

• Color preception
• Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory

EGYPTOLOGY

• Studied the Rosetta Stone
• Contributed heavily to deciphering Egyptian Language

OTHER WORK

• Measuring size of molecules, surface tension in liquids, and elasticity
• First to give the word energy scientific significance
• Young's modulus/Tensile modulus