THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE 



Young and Fresnel received their full meed of apprecia- 

 tion. Fresnel was given the Rumford medal of the 

 Royal Society of England in 1825, and chosen one of the 

 foreign members of the Society two years later, while 

 Young in turn was elected one of the eight foreign 

 members of the French Academy. As a fitting culmi- 

 nation of the chapter of felicities between the three 

 friends, it fell to the lot of Young, as Foreign Secretary 

 of the Royal Society, to notify Fresnel of the honors 

 shown him by England's representative body of sci- 

 entists; while Arago, as Perpetual Secretary of the 

 French Institute, conveyed to Young in the same year 

 the notification that he had been similarly honored by 

 the savants of France. 



A few months later Fresnel was dead, and Young 

 survived him only two years. Both died premature- 

 ly.; but their great work was done, and the world will 

 remember always and link together these two names in 

 connection with a theory which in its implications and 

 importance ranks little below the theory of universal 

 gravitation. 



ii 



The full importance of Young's studies of light might 

 perhaps have gained earlier recognition had it not 

 chanced that, at the time when they were made, the 

 attention of the philosophic world was turned with the 

 fixity and fascination of a hypnotic stare upon another 

 field, which for a time brooked no rival. How could 

 the old familiar phenomenon light interest any one 

 when the new agent galvanism was in view? As well 

 ask one to fix attention on a star while a meteorite 



blazes across the sky. 



304 



