A lot is known about the life of Thomas Young (1773–1829) as he wrote an autobiography (in the third person), which was intended eventually to form the basis of an entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Although he qualified as a doctor, he spent his life in many other academic pursuits and you will probably know his name as the person who demonstrated the interference of light (using apparatus now known as Young’s slits), and at a stroke showed that the wave interpretation of light was correct. (Later the wave model was joined by Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect in terms of quanta of electromagnetic energ y.) Young did important work on optics, especially on how the eye worked, and on the phenomenon of astigmatism. He also formulated a theory of colour vision that is now the accepted wisdom.
Young’s name is also familiar in the context of the mechanical properties of materials. This concerns the fact that it isn’t simply an applied force, F, that affects the deforming of an object, but the pressure, i.e. force/area or stress (usually represented by the Greek sigma, σ):
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