|
1592
|
Galileo
Galilei invents the thermometer.
|
|
1600
|
William
Gilbert publishes De Magnete which starts the modern treatment of magnetism. He also
shows that the earth is a magnet.
|
|
1604
|
Galileo
Galilei proves that falling bodies are accelerated towards
the ground at a constant rate. He also shows that the distance
for a falling object increases as the square of the time.
|
|
1609
|
Johannes
Kepler publishes his First and Second laws of planetary motion
in a book entitled Astronomia
Nova.
|
|
1609
|
Galileo
Galilei builds a telescope after hearing of its invention.
|
|
1613
|
Galileo
Galilei introduces his principle of inertia.
|
|
1619
|
Johannes
Kepler publishes his Third law of planetary motion.
|
|
1621
|
Willebrord
van Roijen Snell introduces the law of refraction.
|
|
1638
|
Galileo
introduces the concept of the relativity of motion in his
Two New Sciences.
|
|
1651
|
Blaise
Pascal shows that pressure applied at one point in a liquid
is transmitted unchanged to all points in the liquid (Pascal's
Principle).
|
|
1662
|
Robert
Boyle, while experimenting with gases, shows that if a fixed
amount of a gas is kept at a constant temperature, the pressure
and the volume of the gas follow a simple mathematical relationship.
|
|
1665-1966
|
Isaac
Newton begins his work on the motion of bodies. He also completes
his theory of colors, develops the main ideas on the calculus,
and his law of gravitation.
|
|
1668
|
Isaac
Newton designs and builds a reflecting telescope.
|
|
1672
|
Isaac
Newton, in a letter to the Royal Society, describes his experiments
explaining the nature of color. This letter became Newton's
first published scientific paper.
|
|
1676
|
Robert
Hooke proposes his law relating the elongation of a spring
to the force applied to produce that elongation.
|
|
1714
|
Gabriel
Fahrenheit introduces the mercury thermometer and his new
scale of temperature.
|
|
1738
|
Daniel
Bernoulli develops the foundations of hydrodynamics.
|
|
1742
|
Anders
Celsius proposes a new temperature scale.
|
|
1838
|
Friedrich
Bessel first observes the parallax of a star with the aid
of a telescope.
|
|
1747
|
Benjamin
Franklin conducts experiments that show that one type of electrification
could be neutralized by the other type. This indicated to
him that the two types of electricity were not just different;
they were opposites
and calls one type positive and the other negative.
|
|
1848
|
William
Thomson, Lord Kelvin, devises what is now known as the absolute
temperature scale or Kelvin scale.
|
|
1766
|
Joseph
Priestley proposes that the force between electric charges
follows an inverse square law.
|
|
1777
|
Charles
de Coulomb invents a torsion balance to measure the force between electrically
charged objects (Coulomb's law).
|
|
1787
|
Jacques-Alexander
Charles discovers the relationship between the change in volume
of a gas with temperature. He fails to publish his discovery.
|
|
1798
|
Henry
Cavendish adapts the torsion balance invented by Coulomb to
measure the gravitational constant.
|
|
1798
|
Benjamin
Thompson, Count Rumford, introduces the idea that the heat
was a form of motion.
|
|
1800
|
Alessandro
Volta invents the battery.
|
|
1802
|
Thomas
Young, in a landmark experiment, demonstrates that light is
a wave phenomenon.
|
|
1802
|
Gian
Domenico Romagnosi proposes in a newspaper article that an
electric current affects a magnetic current. His discovery
is largely ignored. Oersted, a better known scientist, would
discover the same phenomenon in 1819.
|
|
1804
|
Joseph
Louis Gay-Lussac, without knowledge of Charles' work of 1787,
discovers the relationship between the expansion of a gas
at constant pressure and the temperature. This discovery is
known as Gay-Lussac's law.
|
|
1808
|
John
Dalton develops his atomic theory.
|
|
1814
|
Joseph
von Fraunhofer invents the spectroscope and with it he observes
the absorption lines in the sun's spectrum two years later.
|
|
1819
|
Hans
Christian Oersted discovers that an electric current deflects
a magnetic compass. His discovery, published in a scientific
journal, gets noticed.
|
|
1820
|
André
Ampère gives mathematical form to Oersted's discovery. In
modern language, Ampère's law is stated as follows: an electric
current creates a magnetic field.
|
|
1820
|
Biot
and Savart propose a force law between an electric current
and a magnetic field.
|
|
1822
|
André
Ampère shows that two wires carrying electric currents attract
each other.
|
|
1827
|
Georg
Ohm shows that current and voltage are related by a very simple
relationship, known today as Ohm's law.
|
|
1831
|
Michael
Faraday showed experimentally that a changing magnetic field
produces an electric current (Faraday's law).
|
|
1842
|
Christian
Doppler proposes his Doppler Effect for sound and light waves.
|
|
1843
|
James
Joule measures the electrical equivalent of heat.
|
|
1846
|
Gustav
Kirchhoff proposes his rules of electrical circuits (Kirchoff's
rules).
|
|
1850
|
Rudolf
Gottlieb, known as Clausius, states the second law of thermodynamics.
|
|
1851
|
Armand
Fizeau measures the velocity of light in a moving medium.
|
|
1868
|
James
Clerk Maxwell proposes the electromagnetic nature of light
and suggests that electromagnetic waves exist and are observed
as light.
|
|
1869
|
Dmitri
Mendeleyev proposes his periodic table of the chemical elements.
|
|
1873
|
Johannes
van der Waals develops his theory of intermolecular forces
in fluids.
|
|
1887
|
Heinrich
Hertz generates electromagnetic waves in his laboratory.
|
|
1887
|
Albert
Michelson and E.W. Morley, in a landmark experiment, determine
the absence of the ether, a substance postulated to fill all
space.
|
|
1895
|
Wilhelm
Roentgen discovers X-rays.
|
|
1890
|
James
Prescott Joule measures the mechanical equivalent of heat.
|
|
1897
|
J.J.
Thomson determines the charge to mass ratio of the electron.
|
|
1898
|
Pierre
and Marie Curie discover the radioactive elements radium and
polonium.
|
|
1898
|
Ernest
Rutherford discovers alpha and beta radiation.
|
|
1900
|
Max
Planck introduces the concept of quanta in black body radiation
and Planck's constant.
|
|
1905
|
Albert
Einstein explains Brownian motion.
|
|
1905
|
Albert
Einstein explains the photoelectric effect.
|
|
1905
|
Albert
Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity.
|
|
1905
|
Albert
Einstein postulates the equivalence of mass and energy.
|
|
1906
|
Albert
Einstein proposes quantum explanation of the specific heat
laws for solids.
|
|
1909
|
Robert
Millikan measures the charge on the electron.
|
|
1911
|
Heike
Kamerlingh Onnes introduces his theory of superconductivity.
|
|
1911
|
Ernest
Rutherford discovers the nucleus of the atom.
|
|
1913
|
Niels
Bohr proposes his quantum theory of atomic orbits.
|
|
1915
|
Albert
Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.
|
|
1916
|
Karl
Schwarzschild calculates the critical radius of curvature
of space-time around a collapsing star at which light cannot
escape.
|
|
1917
|
Albert
Einstein presents his theory of stimulated emission, the foundation
for the laser.
|
|
1918
|
Emmy
Nöther proposes the mathematical relationships between symmetry
and conservation laws of physics.
|
|
1923
|
Louis
de Broglie predicts the wave nature of particles.
|
|
1925
|
Werner
Heisenberrg develops matrix mechanics, the first quantum mechanical
theory.
|
|
1926
|
Erwin
Schrödinger develops wave mechanics, an alternate quantum
mechanical theory.
|
|
1926
|
Werner
Heisenberg proposes the uncertainty principle.
|
|
1927
|
Niels
Bohr proposes the principle of complementarity.
|
|
1927
|
Niels
Bohr develops the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
|
|
1930
|
Ernest
Orlando Lawrence and M. Stanley Livingston invent the cyclotron.
|
|
1932
|
James
Chadwick identifies the neutron.
|
|
1932
|
Werner
Heisenberg proposes that the nucleus of an atom is composed
of protons and neutrons.
|
|
1942
|
Enrico
Fermi obtains the first self sustaining fission reaction.
|
|
1948
|
Shin'ichiro
Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, and Richard Feynman develop quantum
electrodynamics or QED.
|
|
1948
|
John
Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the
transistor.
|
|
1953
|
Charles
Townes invents the maser.
|
|
1954
|
C.N.
Yang and Robert L. Mills propose a non-abelian gauge theory.
|
|
1956
|
Murray
Gell-Mann and Kazuhiko Nishijima introduce the strangeness
quantum number.
|
|
1957
|
John
Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and John R. Schrieffer propose their
BCS theory of superconductivity.
|
|
1961
|
Sheldon
Glashow introduces the neutral intermediate vector boson of
electroweak interactions.
|
|
1961
|
Murray
Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'eman independendently discover the
SU(3) octet symmetry of hadrons.
|
|
1964
|
Peter
Higgs, Robert Brout, and F. Englert introduce the Higgs mechanism
of symmetry breaking.
|
|
1964
|
Murray
Gell-Mann and George Zweig independently propose the quark
theory of hadrons.
|
|
1965
|
John
Stewart Bell states and proves a powerful theorem (Bell's
theorem), which
gives the theoretical limits on the correlations between the
results of simultaneous measurements done on two separated
particles. The limits on these correlations are given by Bell
in the form of an inequality.
|
|
1965
|
Arno
Penzias and Robert Wilson measure the cosmic background radiation.
|
|
1967
|
Steven
Weinberg and Abdus Salam independently propose the electroweak
unification which is based on significant contributions by
Sheldon Glashaw. The three would later share the Nobel Prize
in physics for their theory.
|
|
1974
|
Howard
Georgi and Sheldon Glashow propose the SU(5) as a Grand Unified
Theory and predict decay of the proton.
|
|
1977
|
A
Fermilab team detects the bottom quark
|
|
1981
|
Michael
Green and John Schwarz propose what becomes known as Type
I superstring theory.
|
|
1981
|
Gerd
Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer invent the scanning tunneling microscope.
|
|
1982
|
Alain
Aspect performs an experiment that is considered to confirm
the non-local aspects of quantum mechanics.
|
|
1983
|
Carlo
Rubbia leads a team that detects the W and Z bosons at CERN.
|
|
1994
|
A
Fermilab team detects the top quark.
|
|
2000
|
Tantalizing
hints of the existence of the Higgs boson are seen in experiments
with the Large Electron Positron collider at CERN, the European
Laboratory for Particle Physics.
|
