Peter Mark Roget

About Peter Mark Roget

Who is it?: Lexicographer
Birth Day: January 18, 1779
Birth Place: Soho, British
Died On: 12 September 1869(1869-09-12) (aged 90)\nWest Malvern, Worcestershire, England
Birth Sign: Aquarius
Resting place: Cemetery of St James's Church, West Malvern 52°06′45″N 2°20′49″W / 52.1125°N 2.3469°W / 52.1125; -2.3469
Residence: London, Edinburgh, Manchester
Alma mater: University of Edinburgh
Spouse(s): Mary Taylor (1824–1869, her death)
Children: One son and one daughter
Awards: FRS (1815)

Peter Mark Roget Net Worth

Peter Mark Roget was born on January 18, 1779 in Soho, British, is Lexicographer. Peter Mark Roget was an English physician, philologist and inventor who is most celebrated for 'Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases', a classified collection of related words, first published in 1852. Born to a Swiss clergyman in England, Roget attended the Edinburgh University and graduated in medicine. As a young physician, he published works on tuberculosis and on the effects of nitrous oxide, then used as an anesthetic. After initially practicing in Bristol and Manchester, he moved to London and continued to lecture on medical topics. Later, Roget invented a slide rule to calculate the roots and powers of numbers which formed the basis of slide rules that served as the common currency in schools and universities until the invention of the calculator. He also had a keen interest in optics and wrote a paper suggesting the methods to improve the kaleidoscope. Along with that, he also wrote papers on a wide range of topics such as, natural theology, phenology and contributed to several encyclopedias of the time. After taking effective retirement from medicine, he spent the rest of his life on the project for which he is most remembered today, 'Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases', a dictionary of synonyms. A fellow of the Royal Society, he served as its Secretary for more than 20 years, and his remarkable Thesaurus has never been out of print since its first publication
Peter Mark Roget is a member of Physicians

💰 Net worth: Under Review

Some Peter Mark Roget images

Biography/Timeline

1798

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. The son of a Swiss clergyman, Roget studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1798. His life was marked by several depressing incidents. His father and his wife died young; while his beloved maternal uncle Samuel Romilly committed suicide in his presence. Roget struggled with depression for most of his life; his work on the The Saurus arose partly from an effort to battle it.

1799

Roget also appears in Shelagh Stephenson's "An Experiment with an Air Pump", which concerns scientific ethics. The play takes place in the household of Joseph Fenwick in 1799, and Roget is one of Fenwick's assistants. Roget was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1815.

1824

On 9 December 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 is seen as an important point in the history of film, and possibly influenced the development of the Thaumatrope, the Phenakistiscope and the Zoetrope.

1834

He wrote numerous papers on physiology and health, among them the fifth Bridgewater Treatise, Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural Theology (1834), a two-volume work on phrenology (1838), and articles for several editions of Encyclopædia Britannica.

1840

Roget retired from professional life in 1840, and in about 1848 began preparing for publication the one work that was to perpetuate his memory. This was the catalogue of words organized by their meanings, the compilation of which had been an avocation since 1805. Its first printed edition, in 1852, was called Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. During his lifetime the work had twenty-eight printings; after his death it was revised and expanded by his son, John Lewis Roget (1828–1908), and later by John's son, Samuel Romilly Roget (1875–?). Peter Roget was a secretary of the Portico Library in Manchester and it was there that he began to compile his The Saurus.

1874

Roget was much concerned with medical education but the School of Medicine at the University of Manchester was only established in 1874. 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 Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution. He was examiner in physiology in the University of London.

1982

Canadian Writer Keath Fraser published a story, "Roget's The Saurus," 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.

2005

Roget was the focus of Randy Wyatt's "Synonymy", which premiered at Minnesota State University's Department of Theatre and Dance in December, 2005. In the play, Gordon, a graduate student, rents Roget's last known residence to inspire himself as he writes his dissertation on the English language and Roget's Thesaurus. The building, soon to be torn down, creates a gateway through which Gordon finds himself traveling back in time and meeting Roget and his daughter, Kate.

2014

A picture book biography of Roget entitled The Right Word: Roget and His The Saurus was published by Eerdmans Books in 2014. It was named a Caldecott Honor book for excellence in illustration, and won the Sibert Medal for excellence in children's nonfiction.