Atomic History

By swidmer
  • Democritus
    400 BCE

    Democritus

    Born: unknown
    Died: unknown
    Believed that atoms where uniform, solid, hard, in-compressible and indestructible.
    Everything is composed of atoms.
  • John Dalton

    John Dalton

    Born: 09/06/1766
    Died:07/27/1844
    He proposed that all matter is made of tiny indivisible particles called atoms.
    Scientist came up with atomic neutrons, protons, and electrons from his theory.
  • Dmitri Mendeleev

    Dmitri Mendeleev

    Born: 02/08/1934
    Died: 02/02/1907
    Made the periodic table!
    He "periodically" gets mentioned in science class
  • J.J. Thompson

    J.J. Thompson

    Born: 12/18/1856
    Died: 08/3/1940
    Discovered the first subatomic particle, the electron while researching cathode rays.
    Scientist know there are particles smaller than atoms.
  • Niels Bohr

    Niels Bohr

    Born: 10/07/1885
    Died: 11/18/1962
    Propsed a model of the atom in which the electron was able to occupy only certain orbits around the nucleus.
    Scientist know that electrons travel in separate orbits around the nucleus.
  • Ernest Rutherford

    Ernest Rutherford

    Born: 08/30/1971
    Died: 10/19/1937
    He performed the first artificially induced nuclear reaction, as a result discovered the hydrogen atom.
    Scientist know the mass of the atom is concentrated in its nucleus.
  • Erwin Schrodinger

    Erwin Schrodinger

    Born: 08/12/1887
    Died: 01/04/1961
    Theorized that the behavior of electrons within atoms could be explained by treating them mathematically as waves.
    Today he is most famous from The Big Bang Theory of Sheldon explaining Schrodinger's Cat.
  • Werner Heisenberg

    Werner Heisenberg

    Born: 12/05/1901
    Died: 02/01/1976
    Formulated quantum mechanics in terms of matrices and in discovering the uncertainty principle.
    Cosmic ray theories.
  • James Chadwick

    James Chadwick

    Born: 10/20/1891
    Died: 07/24/1974
    Discovered the neutron!
    We know positively charged protons and neutral neutrons bound together as the atoms nucleus, with negatively charged electrons occupy energy levels surrounding the nucleus.