Sydney Young, 1857-1937

Abstract

Sydney Young was born at Farnworth near Widnes, in Lancashire, on 29 December, 1857. His father, Edward Young, was a very prosperous Liverpool merchant and a Justice of the Peace for the county. After receiving his early education at the Royal Institution, Liverpool, he refused his father’s offer of a position in his firm and entered Owens College, Manchester, with the idea of studying chemistry. On his first day at Owens College he spoke to another new student, Charles W. Kimmins, afterwards well known as a lecturer on psychology. The two became close friends and later on Young married Kimmins’s sister, Grace Martha.