226 Presidentship of Sir Joseph Banks 1807 



remember the eagerness with which men clustered around 

 him to listen to his eloquent anticipations of future pro- 

 gress, many of these now more than fulfilled. His lectures 

 at the Royal Institution, novel and earnest in manner, 

 and invigorated by the succession of discoveries they re- 

 corded, brought crowds of admiring hearers." 1 It was on 

 the 26th February, just a month after his election to the 

 Secretaryship, that Davy availed himself of his right to 

 assume his place as an ex officio member of the Club, and he 

 continued for many years to take an active interest in its 

 affairs. 



The visitors this year included some men of marked 

 distinction in different branches of science. Foremost 

 among them was Dr. Thomas Young, the trained physician, 

 brilliant physicist and pioneer Egyptologist. Probably no 

 man in the history of English science has possessed a wider 

 range of acquirement or shown a greater originality alike 

 in physical and physiological research and linguistic studies. 

 After going through a complete medical training in London 

 and Edinburgh he took a medical degree at Gottingen and 

 again at Cambridge, and for some years practised the 

 profession of a physician. But he was able to devote him- 

 self also to the prosecution of research in different branches 

 of science. His remarkable paper on the structure of the 

 crystalline lens of the eye led to his election into the Royal 

 Society in 1794 when he was only twenty-one years of 

 age. In 1801 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philo- 

 sophy at the Royal Institution, but soon resigned the 

 post to carry on the series of investigations on the theory 

 of light and colours, and on capillary action, on which his 

 high reputation in physical science mainly rests. Thus on 

 the one side he might appear to be a philosopher absorbed 

 in original research, on the other side he was known to 

 be a physician engaged in the daily calling of his profession 

 and in lecturing on medical subjects at the College of Phy- 

 sicians. Yet there was still another avenue along which 

 his amazing industry led him far ; he found time to work 



1 Recollections of Past Life, p. 213. 



