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John Dalton
John Dalton, an English chemist and physicist, was born on September 6, 1766. He was the first person to record colour-blindness (referred to as ‘Daltonism’) as he was also a victim of colour blindness. He is well known for producing a gas law named ‘Dalton’s Law’ in 1803. The John Dalton’s Atomic Theory, defines the 3 main principles of atoms. This theory holds significance in creating a basis for the current science. His brilliant efforts led to the evolution of the modern atomic theory. -
Francis William Aston
Francis William Aston was born on September 1, 1877. He is a British physicist that was an assistant to Sir J.J. Thomson and won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1922. Aston is well known for obtaining evidence for the existence of two isotopes of the inert gas neon in 1895-1896. In 1919 after World War 1, He formulated the “whole number mass” and constructed a mass spectrograph (spectrometer) that was a new type positive-ray apparatus. -
J.J. Thomson
Joseph John Thomson (J.J.), was born in Cheetham Hill, England on December 18, 1856 and died August 30, 1940. J.J. Thomson won the Nobel Prize in Physics 1906 and his research led to the discovery of electrons. In 1897, Thomson determined that all matter is made up of particles that are even smaller than atoms. He named these particles ‘corpuscles’ but are now called electrons. He also discovered that neon was composed of two different kinds of atoms. -
Marie Curie
Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1867. She was a chemist and physicist and the first person in History to be awarded 2 Nobel Prizes, in physics and chemistry. In 1986, when she was looking for a possible topic for her thesis she decided to look into Uranium rays. In 1898, this research came to discover two new elements; polonium, named after the country of Marie’s birth, and radium. In 1911, she was awarded her second Nobel Prize as she used radium to heal the wounds of soldiers in WW1. -
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford was born in 1871 in New Zealand. Ernest Rutherford was a physicist who studied radioactivity. These studies led to the exploration of nuclear physics from 1909-1911 Rutherford and Professor J.JThomson collaborated on a study of a study of x-rays. His discovery consisted that nearly the total mass of an atom is concentrated in the nucleus. He produced the nuclear model that marked the inception of nuclear physics. Because of this, the model that paved the way to the atomic bomb. -
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen in 1885 and died in November in 1962. He is said to be the ‘Father of Quantum Theory’. In 1913, he explored the ideas of the structure of an atom and he made the discovery that electrons orbit around the atom's nucleus. This was shown through a model which was called the ‘Niels Model’. He also explained how atoms absorb and emit energy. In 1922, his discovery awarded him a Nobel Prize in Physics. He also helped to form what we know today about quantum physics. -
Henry Moseley
Henry Moseley, a British physicist was born in Weymouth, Dorset in England on November 23, 1887. Henry Moseley studied under Rutherford. In 1913, he created the Moseley’s law and designed the development application of X-ray spectra used to study atomic structure, these contributions were made in 1913. He is well known for establishing the truly scientific basis of the Periodic Table of Elements. This was discovered by chemical elements in the order of their atomic number. -
Erwin Schrodiger
Erwin Schrodinger was born in 1887. Aswell as a founder of quantum mechanics, he made huge contributions in the theory of matter. In 1926, he took the contributions of Niels Bohr and worked further. He took the model of an atom and using mathematical equations, discovered the likelihood of finding an electron in a certain position. His equation to work this out was "the wave equation of non relativistic quantum mechanics". He received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. -
James Chadwick
James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England in 1891 and died in 1974. After graduating from Manchester University in 1911, he worked at as a Professor in the Physics Laboratory In 1932, James Chadwick discovered the existence of neutrons which is one of the fundamental discoveries of nuclear science. He also discovered that atomic number is determined to by the number of protons in an atom. -
Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann was born in New York City on 15th September 1929. He is a physicist who made significant contributions to Atomic Theory over the course of many years. In 1953, he developed the concept of strangeness for particles, ‘he explained the with a quantum number why some hadrons decay rapidly by the strong nuclear force while others decay more slowly by the weak force’. He developed a fundamental aspect to Atomic Theory which was the quark, which lead tofurther development in atoms.
