How long does it take to read The Last Man Who Knew Everything?
The Last Man Who Knew Everything by Andrew Robinson takes about 5 hours 29 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 29 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2005. 299 pages, about 82,225 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 8 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 29 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 26 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
No one has given the polymath Thomas Young (1773–1829) the all-round examination he so richly deserves—until now. Celebrated biographer Andrew Robinson portrays a man who solved mystery after mystery in the face of ridicule and rejection, and never sought fame. As a physicist, Young challenged the theories of Isaac Newton and proved that light is a wave. As a physician, he showed how the eye focuses and proposed the three-colour theory of vision, only confirmed a century and a half later. As an Egyptologist, he made crucial contributions to deciphering the Rosetta Stone. It is hard to grasp how much Young knew. This biography is the fascinating story of a driven yet modest hero who cared less about what others thought of him than for the joys of an unbridled pursuit of knowledge—with a new foreword by Martin Rees and a new postscript discussing polymathy in the two centuries since the time of Young. It returns this neglected genius to his proper position in the pantheon of great scientific thinkers.
Subjects: Physicians, Linguists, Science, Scientists, Discoveries in science, Biography
