History of the Atom

  • Democritus
    400 BCE

    Democritus

    Democritus theorizes atoms exist. He named them atoms because in Greek "atomos" means "uncut". He thought atoms were invisible and were the shape of whatever they makeup.
  • John Dalton

    John Dalton

    John Dalton thought that all matter was made up of atoms,
    all atoms of an element had a fixed mass,
    compounds contain atoms from different elements, and in compounds atoms from different elements always combine in a specific way. This is a picture of what he thought atoms looked like.
  • Marie Curie

    Marie Curie

    Marie Curie discovered Radium, Plutonium, and coined the term "radioactivity". Unfortunately because she was a woman her husband got all of the credit.
  • E. Goldstein

    E. Goldstein

    Goldstein discovered protons using anode rays. He said that protons and electrons balanced each other out and that electrons madeup electricity.
  • J.J. Thompson

    J.J. Thompson

    Thompson used Cathode rays to discover electrons and said they were organized like plum pudding.
  • Robert Millikan

    Robert Millikan

    Millkan discovered that electrons have a negative charge.
  • Ernest Rutherford

    Ernest Rutherford

    Rutherford discovered the nucleus of atoms by reflecting particles off gold foil.
  • Niels Bohr

    Niels Bohr

    Stated that electrons orbit at a fixed distance from the nucleus.
  • James Chadwick

    James Chadwick

    Proved the nucleus existed and stated it was made of protons and neutrons and that neutrons have no charge.
  • Quantum Mechanical Model (aka Wave Model)

    Quantum Mechanical Model (aka Wave Model)

    Erwin ShrÖdinger discovered electrons have no set path and created the model used today.