Prof. John Young

Abstract

JOHN YOUNG was born in Edinburgh in 1835. He was educated at the High School and at the University, and finally he graduated as doctor of medicine. Like many of his time, he came under the spell of the great teachers who then made the northern university famous, such men as Goodsir, Edward Forbes, Christison, Syme and Simpson, and there is reason to believe that in particular the first two gave a scientific bias to Dr. Young's career. For some time he worked on the staff of the Ordnance Survey and made a friend of Sir Roderick Murchison, then a leader in the geological world. This was followed by his appointment to the chair of natural history in the University of Glasgow in 1866, and in this chair he taught both zoology and geology for nearly thirty-five years. After a period of failing health, he died on December 13, 1902. Such, in brief, is an outline of his career, but those who knew Dr. Young will recognise how imperfect a representation it is of the man's personality. Gifted with a keen and penetrating intellect and a fertile imagination, showing versatility of acquirements rarely met with, absolutely unconventional, he was also a man of untiring and restless energy. He was a scholar in a high sense of the term, he possessed a cultivated and pure literary taste, he was an artist facile both with brush and pencil, and he had a wide and critical taste in music. As keeper of the Hunterian Museum, he acquired much knowledge of rare books and manuscripts, of the great collection of coins and medals to be found there, and of works of art. Wide, however, as was the sphere of his activity in the University, he yet found time for active labours in the cause of female education, in the work of the Technical College, and in the municipal and social life of the city of Glasgow. It was this versatility and superabundant energy that hindered Dr. Young from doing the amount of original work in the two sciences of zoology and geology which might have been, expected from a man of his genius, and the vvoik of his life must not be judged from this point of view. His chief labour, perhaps, was the systematic arrangement of the great legacy of William Hunter-books, pictures, medals, engravings, coins-and in this work he took a keen delight and over it he spent laborious hours, even far on into the night when silence reigned in the cloisters. But it was the man's individuality of character that made him a force in his time. Often a determined opponent, he could also be a true friend, while his mental moods, sometimes quiet and observant, ofttimes brilliant and radiant with flashes of wit and humour, constrained even those who knew him best to regard him as a man quite by himself. He has thus left little of an enduring character in the literature of science, but he will be long remembered by many generations of students in the University of Glasgow.