Peter Mark Roget
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Peter Mark Roget IPA: /roʊˈʒeɪ/ (January 18, 1779 – September 12, 1869) was a British physician, natural theologian and lexicographer. He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (Roget's Thesaurus), a classified collection of related words.
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[edit] Biography
Peter Mark Roget was born in London. His obsession with list-making as a coping-mechanism was well-established by the time he was eight years old.[1] The son of a Swiss clergyman, Roget studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. His life was marked by several incidents of sadness. His father and his wife died young. One uncle committed suicide in Roget's presence. Roget struggled with depression for most of his life. His work on the thesaurus arose partly from an effort to battle depression.[2]
Roget died while on holiday and is buried in the cemetery of St James's Church, West Malvern, Worcestershire.
[edit] Roget in science and technology
Roget helped found the School of Medicine at the University of Manchester. He was also one of the founders of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, which later became the Royal Society of Medicine, and he was a secretary of the Royal Society. In 1815, he invented the log-log slide rule, allowing a person to perform exponential and root calculations simply. This was especially helpful for calculations involving fractional powers and roots. In 1834 he became the first Fullerian Professors of Physiology at the Royal Institution
On December 9, 1824, Roget presented a paper entitled Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel when seen through vertical apertures. This article is often incorrectly referenced as either On the Persistence of Vision with Regard to Human Motion or Persistence of Vision with regard to Moving Objects, likely due to erroneous citations by film historians Terry Ramsaye and Arthur Knight (see Anderson and Anderson below).
While Roget's explanation of the illusion was probably wrong, his consideration of the illusion of motion was an important point in the history of film, and probably influenced the development of the Thaumatrope, the Phenakistiscope and the Zoetrope.
He wrote the fifth Bridgewater Treatise, Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural Theology.
[edit] Roget in art and culture
Canadian writer Keath Fraser published a story, "Roget's Thesaurus," in 1982 which is narrated in Roget's voice. Minimalist in style, Fraser's story manages to capture both the associative power of language and many of the salient facts of Roget's life in a text that occupies less than two full pages.
Roget was the focus of the play "Synonymy" by Randy Wyatt. It tells the story of a graduate student named Gordon who rents out the last known residence of Roget to inspire him as he works on his dissertation regarding the English language and Roget's Thesaurus. The building, which was soon to be torn down, created a gateway in which Gordon found himself traveling back in time and meeting Roget and his daughter, Kate. "Synonymy" premiered at Minnesota State University's Department of Theatre and Dance in December 2005.
He is also a character in the play "An Experiment with an Air Pump" by Shelagh Stephenson, which concerns scientific ethics. The play takes place in the household of Joseph Fenwick in 1799 - Roget appears as one of Fenwick's assistants.
On July 23, 2007, he was misidentified as a Frenchman by the Australian Chaser's War on Everything in their song "I am Thesaurus", a parody of The Beatles' "I am the Walrus".
[edit] See also
- Earl of Bridgewater for other Bridgewater Treatise
- Lexicography
[edit] Selected writings
- Roget, Peter Mark (1832). Treatises on Electricity, Galvanism, Magnetism, and Electro-magnetism. London: William Clowes.
- Roget, Peter Mark (1834). Animal and vegetable physiology, considered with reference to natural theology. London: William Pickering.
- Roget, Peter Mark (1856). Thesaurus of English words and phrases, 4, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
[edit] References
- ^ Mallon, Thomas (2008). Obsessed (Agog, Beset, Consumed, Driven, etc.).
- ^ Spiegelman, Arthur (2008). The man who made lists to fend off depression.
[edit] Further reading
- Anderson, John; Anderson, Barbara (1993). "The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited". Journal of Film and Video 45 (1): 2 – 12.
- Anderson, John; Fisher, Barbara (1978). "The Myth of Persistence of Vision". Journal of the University Film Association 30 (4): 3 – 8.
- Emblen, Donald Lewis (1970). Peter Mark Roget: The word and the man. Longman. ISBN 0-582-10827-6.
- Kendall, Joshua (2008). The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 978-0-399-15462-1.
- "Roget, Peter Mark" in Dictionary of National Biography London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1897.
