History of Atomic Structure

  • Democritus
    400 BCE

    Democritus

    Contributed to atomism, theory that everything is made up of microscopic indivisible particles (first to suggest atoms)
  • John Dalton

    John Dalton

    Discovered the Atomic Theory (every form of matter is made up of individual particles)
  • Dmitri Mendeleev

    Dmitri Mendeleev

    Created periodic table
  • Eugene Goldstein

    Eugene Goldstein

    Discovered the proton
  • J.J. Thomson

    J.J. Thomson

    Discovered electron
  • Robert Millikan

    Robert Millikan

    Discovered electric charge
  • Ernest Rutherford

    Ernest Rutherford

    Discovered nucleus
  • Niels Bohr

    Niels Bohr

    Discovered that electrons travel in separate orbits around the nucleus
  • Max Planck

    Max Planck

    Created quantum theory and won the Nobel Prize for it
  • Werner Heisenberg

    Werner Heisenberg

    Created the theory of quantum mechanics
  • Erwin Schrodinger

    Erwin Schrodinger

    Created quantum mechanical model
  • James Chadwick

    James Chadwick

    Discovered the neutron