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460 BCE
Leucippus
Leucippus often took part in and worked alongside Democritus contributing to his work and vise versa. It is even said that Leucippus was the pupil of Democritus, and taught him things that contributed to his work. Leucippus is actually the one being credited with founder of atomism, which describes atoms and how they make up all objects.It is even difficult for scientists to distinguish the works of Leucippus from those of Democritus -
400 BCE
Democritus
Democritus was an ancient Greek philosopher who had a main part in the development of philosophical atomism and the atomic theory. The atomistic view describes how the universe is made up of tiny minute particles, this idea has carried o to current day. The atomic theory is also still relevant today, it explains that all things are made up of hard, small particles called atoms. The ancient theory was proposed in the 5th century BC and revived by Lucretius in the 1st century BC. -
384 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle's first contribution to the world was when he wrote a scientific system that became important for the Christians and Islams. He had a wide range of education and specialties in many diverse topics, however he was most outstanding as a philosopher. He had many writing contribution to ethics, political theory, and metaphysics continue to be studied and referred back to. -
1100
Alchemy
Alchemy is a form of thought that tried to transform metals into silver or gold also trying to discover a cure for disease and a way of extending life. There are 3 types of Alchemy: Chinese, Middle Eastern, and European. Alchemy corresponds to the concept of astrology and how human beings relate to the cosmos and the stars. As Alchemy has developed throughout the years there is now a modern version which is more aimed towards religion being that some of the old beliefs have been disproved. -
1530
Paracelsus
Paracelsus was a German-Swiss physician and alchemist who established the role of chemistry in medicine. In 1530 was when he wrote a clinical description of syphilis, a systemic disease, which was spread around and commonly used by people. He is also said to have cured and helped many sick people during the plague in a small German town during 1534. -
1550
George Bauer
Bauer was a German educator and physician who is best known as the author of a treatise on mining and metallurgy. While acting as a town physician he developed an intense interest in all aspects of the mining and metallurgy industry because the town thrived of it. After a 25 year period of studying the subject his masterpiece was eventually published posthumously. -
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle is most known for his law of gases. Boyle discovered that the volume of a gas decreases with increasing pressure and vice versa- this became known as Boyle's law. He was a prominent and leading intellectual and scientist of his day also contributing a great amount to the experimental method. He published two pieces of work that discussed the pressure of air and pressure of gas, with experiments to go along. -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lavoisier is considered the father of modern chemistry, he promoted the Chemical Revolution and helped systematize chemical nomenclature. Some other very important contributions from Antoine were that he established the law of conservation of mass, determined that combustion and respiration are caused by chemical reactions. Overall, Lavoisier had many other important accomplishments throughout his life. -
Joseph Proust
Proust's most prominent discovery in chemistry was Proust's law or the law of definite proportions. This law became known as the fundamental principle of analytical chemistry. Proust also contributed work in important research in metallurgy, explosives, and nutritional chemistry. Proust was also known as the son of apothecary. -
John Dalton
Dalton's most influential work in chemistry was his atomic theory. There were five points in his theory, two of which were in the end proven wrong by modern chemistry. The parts proven wrong were; all atoms of the same element are identical, isotopes proved this wrong, and the other part is that atoms are indivisible, protons, neutrons and electrons proved the second point wrong. -
Joseph Gay-Lussac
Lussac discovered one of the most fundamental laws of gases, the law of combining volumes. Although Joseph proposed two fundamental laws of gases, one is commonly attributed to countrymen, and the low of combining volumes is the more prominent one. A big part of his successes were his investigations in which he would do some daring assents in hydrogen-filled balloons above ground. -
Billiard Ball
Dalton pictured atoms, which he thought of as the smallest particles of matter, as solid hard spheres like pool balls. -
Jons Jakob Berzelious
Berzelious will best be remembered for his experiments that established the law of constant proportions. The law states that the elements in inorganic substances are bound together in definite proportions by weight. Jons also conducted pioneering experiments in electrochemistry. Overall Berselious was an accomplished experimenter in many different fields of chemistry. -
Amedeo Avogadro
The Italian mathematical physicist created Avogadro's law which showed that under controlled conditions of pressure temperature, equal volume of gases contain an equal number of molecules. His molecular hypothesis is what he is now most well known for and it was stated in 1811. Avogadro used his discoveries towards further explaining French chemist Joseph- Gay Lussac law's of combining volume of gases. -
Plum Pudding Model
Model of the atomic structure proposed by J.J. Thomson in late 19th century. He discovered that are composite made of pieces with positive and negative charge, and the negatively charged electrons were much smaller compared to the atom. -
JJ Thomson
Thomson discovered the electron in 1897 and then later went on to propose a model for the structure of the atom. JJ performed a series of experiments around studying the nature of electric discharge in a high-vacuum cathode-ray tube, this area was being investigated by many other scientists at the time. After discovering the electron, he calculated the charge-to-mass ratio and later estimated the charge of the electron itself. -
Henri Becquerel
Becquerel was a French physicist who discovered radioactivity through his investigations of uranium and other substances. In 1903 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with two other physics. He was born into a scientific family that ran through many generations. After many studies and experiments, Becquerel published seven papers discussing radioactivity and his findings. -
Ernest Rutherford
Rutherford, a British-physicist, was considered the greatest experimentalist of his time. He was a big part in the study of radioactivity, and his concept of the nuclear atom led the exploration of nuclear physics. In 1908 he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and had a series of other accomplishments follow. Rutherford's ideas and discoveries are woven with the Bohr atomic model, relating to the structure of an atom. -
Rutherford's Model
Based on Rutherford's gold foil experiment he demonstrated that the atom has a tiny and dense nucleus. . Rutherford designed an experiment to use the alpha particles emitted by a radioactive element as probes to the unseen world of atomic structure. -
Max Planck
Planck was a German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory which would alter win him the Nobel Prize in 1918. His theory revolutionized our understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. The theory takes part in constituting the fundamental theories of 20th-century physics. It has led human-kind to revise some of the most cherished philosophical beliefs, leading to both industrial and military applications affecting every aspect of modern life. -
Niels Bohr
This Danish physicist is generally regarded as one of the foremost physicists of the 20th century. He was the first one to apply the quantum concept to the problem of atomic and molecular structure. Due to that work he received the Nobel Prize in 1922 for Physics. His mos important contribution might be his role in the origins and development of the quantum concept. -
Robert Millikan
Millikan was a very well known American physicist who was honored with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for his study of the elementary electronic charge and the photoelectric charge. 1909 was when he began his series of experiments centered around determining the electric charge carried by a single electron. His most famous experiment took place in 1910 and was called the oil-drop experiment, replacing water with oil. -
Werner Heisenberg
Heisenberg was a German physicist and philosopher who discovered a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. Due to this discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1932. He also published his uncertainty principle which he built his philosophy off of and he is best known for. He also made important contributions to other fields of science and other new discoveries. -
Electron Cloud Model
Developed by Erwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg the model is a way to help visualize the most probable position of electrons in an atom. -
Arthur Compton
Compton was a joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927 for his discovery and explanation of the change in wavelength of X rays when they collide with electrons in metals. The Compton effect is caused by the transfer of energy from a photon to an electron. The discovery of it in 1922 confirmed the dual nature of electromagnetic radiation as both a wave and a particle. -
Louis de Brogile
The French physicist was best known for his research on quantum theory and for predicting the wave nature of electrons. In 1929 he was awarded the Noble Prize for Physics. De Brogiles proposal answered questions that has been raised by calculations of the motion of electrons within the atom. -
Erwin Schrodinger
Erwin was an Austrian theoretical physicist who contributed to the wave theory of matter and to other fundamentals of the quantum mechanics. In 1933 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with another British physicist. Schrodinger devoted much of his later life to formulating philosophical objections to the generally accepted interpretation of the theory. -
Murray Gell-Mann
The American Physicist was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1969. He is known for his work pertaining to the classification of subatomic particles and their interactions. In 1961 was when he first started his work with proposing a scheme for classifying previously discovered strongly interacting particles into a simple arrangement of families. -
Carlo Rubbia
The Italian physicist won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1984 with another physicist. He won it for the discovery of the massive, short-lived subatomic W and Z particles. These particles carry the so called weak force involved of the radioactive decay of nuclei. They strongly confirm the validity of the electroweak theory. -
Peter Higgs
The British physicist was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics for proposing the existence of the Higgs boson. This is a subatomic particle that is the carrier particle of a field that endows all elementary particles with mass through its interactions with them. Some of Higgs earlier work had to do with molecular physics and concerned calculating the vibrational spectra of molecules.
