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Antoine Lavoisier
He came up with the Law of Coversation, which stated that matter could not be made or destroyed. Antoine Lavoisier was the main reason to why people started wondering what an atom was and what it was all about (historyoftheatomictheory.weebly.com) -
Joseph Louis Proust
He developed the law of definite proportions. It stated that chemical substances only truly combine to form a small number of compounds, and they are all characterized by components that combine in fixed proportions by their weight. This meant that they always contained the same ratio by weight of their elements (chemed.chem.purdue.edu). -
John Dalton
Dalton proposed the atomic theory, involving spherical solid atoms, that stated that-
1. All matter is made of atoms, which are indivisible and indestructable.
2. All atoms in a given element have the same mass and properties.
3. Compounds are formed by combining two or more different atoms.
4. A chemical reaction causes a rearrangement of atoms.
His theory remains in today's chemical thoughts. (www.iun.edu) -
Michael Faraday
Faraday studied how electricity affected solutions which then caused him to create the phrase "electrolysis". This phrase was used to describe the spiltting of molecules with electricity (atomictimeline.net). -
Henri Becquerel
His greatest discovery was radioactivity. He came up with an experiment that showed the existance of a naturally occuring force (biography.com). -
J.J. Thomson
J.J. Thomson created the Plum Pudding Model. The Plum Pudding Model included thousands of small negatively charged corpuscles that swarmed inside a cloud of massless positive charge (www.aip.org) -
Marie Currie
Marie Currie further studied the decay process called radioactivity, and uranium and thorium. She also discovered two radioactive elements, polonium and radium. -
Max Planck
Early phyics could not predict the energy given off of anobject when it was heated. He proposed an answer, by suggesting that energy had to be quantized. This was the birth of quantum mechanics (visionlearning.com). -
Albert Einstein.
In what was known to be his "miracle year", Einstein came up with the equation E=mc2. This proved that small particles of matter could be made into huge amounts of energy. This was a foreshadowing to the development of atomic power (biography.com). -
Robert Milikan
Millikan conducted an oil-drop experiment, where the charge on a single electron was measured. This measured the force the droplets of oil suspended against gravity between two metal electrodes (chemed.chem.purdue.edu). -
Ernest Rutherford
In 1911, he came up with a revolutionary view of the atom. It was known as the planetary mocel of the atom. Ernest said that the nucleous was small, dense, and positively charged and was surrounded by electrons, which was all shown in his model (visionlearning.com). -
Niels Bohr
Bohr further expanded on Ernest Rutherford's ideas. He took the main concept Ernest proposed and applied it to new ideas about quantum theory to it, and developed the Quantum Mechanical Model. This was a very significant step because it helped explain the evidence that questioned the previous model, and helped make a better model (visionlearning.com). -
Louis DeBroglie
He thought that electrons could act in similar ways to particles and waves. His discovery that electrons act like waves helped explain the actions of electrons. Louis' ideas were a blueprint for developing the wave mechanics theory (the-history-of-the-atom.wikispaces.com). -
Ernest Schrodinger
He further built on the studies of Bohr to create the probability function for the Hydrogen atom, which describes a cloud-like region where the electron can probably be found. His electron cloud model shows where the electron has probably been and where it is likely to be going (regentsprep.org). -
James Chadwick
James Chadwhick was the first to discover the nuetron. This is significant because the nuetrons help reduce the resistance between prottons (visionlearning.com). -
Otto Hahn
Hahn discovered protactinium, with the help of Meitner, and then went to discover uranium. In 1938, Hahn had the peak of his career, when he discovered the fission of uranium. This lead to the development of the atomic bomb (atomicarchive.com). -
Glen T. Seaborg
He is most know for his discovery of the the element plutonium. Seaborg additonally came up with the concept of heavy element electronic structure, which showed how the heavy elements fit into the Periodic Table and it explained the relationships amongst the elements (atomicarchive.com). -
Lisa Meitner
Lisa had major disoveries involving the spilting of the atom. As she worked with Otto Hahn, they discovered that isotope 135 of the Uranium atom was the cause for the weird observations they had seen previously, and it was because of the isotope's unstable structure. They named the process nuclear fission. This was very significant because warned the president about the danger, and it lead to the development of the atomic bomb (sjmv.org) (atomicarchive.com).
