238 Memoir of the Life of Dr. Thomas Young. 
On his return to England he entered: himself of Emmanuel Col- 
lege, Cambridge, of which. Dr. Farmer, an intimate friend of ‘his 
uncle, was then'master. He proceeded to take his regular degrees in 
physic in that university, but did not attend any of the public lectures, 
contenting himself with pursuing the various studies in which he was 
engaged, living on terms of intimacy with the most highly-gifted 
members, and discussing subjects of science with the professors, but 
finding no rival in the variety of his knowledge, and few compe- 
titors in most of its branches. 
Dr. Brocklesby died in 1797: part of his fortune, his books, his 
pictures, and his house, he left to Dr. Young, who now found him- 
self in circumstances of independence, surrounded by a circle of 
distinguished and highly valuable friends, which he continued to 
prize and to enjoy through life. When his residence at college was 
completed he settled himself as a physician-in London, in Welbeck 
Street, where he continued to reside during twenty-five years. 
In 1801, Dr. Young was appointed Professor of Natural Philos- 
ophy in the Royal Institution, where he continued for two years to 
lecture alternately with Sir H. Davy. In 1802, he published his 
‘Syllabus, a course of Lectures on Natural and Experimental Phi- 
losophy, with Mathematical Demonstrations of the most important 
Theorems in Mechanics and Optics.’ This syllabus contained the 
first publication of his discovery of the general law of the Inter- 
. ference of Light, being the application of a principle which has since 
been universally appreciated as one of the greatest discoveries since 
the time of Newton, and which has subsequently changed the whole 
face of optical science.* As a lecturer at the Royal Institution, Dr. 
Young was not eminently successful, for though his lectures were 
replete with interesting original matter, he was not happy in convey- 
ing it in a sufficiently intelligible manner to the capacities of a mixed 
audience, consisting in a great degree of persons of fashion and of . 
the world. Dr. Young’s style and manner were quite opposite to 
those of his eminent colleague, Davy; he was compressed and 
laconic, and presumed*his audience better instructed in the arcana 
of science than such an assembly could possibly be: it has even 
* It was not until the year 1827, that the importance of this law could be said 
to be fully admitted in England: it was in that year that the Council of the Royal 
Society adjudged Count Rumford’s medal to M. Fresnel, for having applied it, with 
some modifications, to the intricate phenomena of polarized light. 
