"We hear no more from Young about his theory of colors until 1807, when he published the first volume of his celebrated work, "A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts." ...Young gives a concise statement of his views on the analysis of the sensations of color and supports these views with conclusive experiments with rotating colored discs; but, strange to say, he omits from this account... all mention of the physiological explanation of it which he gave in the Bakerian Lecture of 1801. ... [I]n the Natural Philosophy we read that, "The sensations of various kinds of light may also be combined in a still more satisfactory manner by painting the surface of a circle with different colours... and causing it to revolve with such rapidity, that the whole may assume the appearance of a single tint, or of a combination of tints, resulting from the mixture of the colours." These experiments were evidently first made by Young; and are fully described in the text and perfectly illustrated... in the plates of Young's work. These experiments have been carefully repeated by Helmholtz, Maxwell, and others, and of their general accuracy there is no doubt. We can readily imagine the delight with which Young must have viewed these beautiful experiments, which, however, together with other truths unfolded by him, were destined to remain unnoticed, "until a later generation, by slow degrees, arrived at the discovery of his discovery.""
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Archaeologists from EnglandPolymathsNatural philosophersScientists from EnglandPhilosophers from England
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Thomas Young (scientist)
Thomas Young (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) was an English genius and polymath, admired by, among others, William Herschel and Albert Einstein. He is famous for having partly deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs (specifically the Rosetta Stone) before Jean-Francois Champollion eventually expanded on his work.
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