History of Physics
Here are some key points in the development of physics.
- 3rd century BC -
Aristarchus proposes a heliocentric model
- 1512 Nicholas Copernicus
first states his heliocentric theory in Commentariolus
- 1577 Tycho Brahe uses
parallax to prove that comets are distant entities and not atmospheric
phenomena
- 1589 Galileo Galilei uses
balls rolling on inclined planes to show that different weights fall
with the same constant acceleration
- 1609 Johannes Kepler
states his first two empirical laws of planetary motion
- 1609 Galileo Galilei
builds his first telescope
- 1619 Johannes Kepler
states his third empirical law of planetary motion
- 1621 Willebrord Snell
states his law of refraction
- 1665 Isaac Newton deduces
the inverse-square gravitational force law from the acceleration of the
moon
- 1665 Isaac Newton invents
his calculus
- 1675 Ole Romer uses the
orbital mechanics of Jupiter's moons to estimate the speed of light
- 1678 Christian Huygens
states his principle of wavefront sources
- 1684 Isaac Newton proves
that planets moving under an inverse-square force law will obey Kepler's
laws
- 1687 Isaac Newton
publishes his Principia Mathematica
- 1752 Benjamin Franklin
shows that lightning is electricity
- 1785 Charles Coulomb
introduces the inverse-square law of electrostatics
- 1798 Henry Cavendish
measures the gravitational constant and determines the mass of the Earth
- 1800 Alessandro Volta
announces his invention of the electric battery
- 1801 Thomas Young
demonstrates the wave nature of light and the principle of interference
- 1820 Hans Oersted notices
that a current in a wire can deflect a compass needle providing the
first concrete evidence of the connection between electricity and
magnetism
- 1820 Within a week after
Oersted's discovery reached France, Ampere discovers that two parallel
electic currents will exert forces on each other
- 1821 Michael Faraday
builds an electricity-powered motor
- 1824 Sadi Carnot analyzes
heat engines
- 1826 Simon Ohm states his
law of electrical resistance
- 1827 Robert Brown
discovers the Brownian motion
- 1831 Faraday discovers
electromagnetic induction
- 1848 Lord Kelvin discovers
the absolute zero point of temperature
- 1849 Joule publishes
results from his series of experiments (including the paddlewheel
experiment) which show that heat is a form of energy
- 1859 Maxwell works out the
mathematics of the distribution of velocities of the molecules of a gas
- 1864 James Maxwell
publishes his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field
- 1873 James Maxwell states
that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon
- 1874 Lord Kelvin formally
states the second law of thermodynamics
- 1887 Albert Michelson and
Edward Morley do not detect the ether drift
- 1887 Heinrich Hertz
discovers the photoelectric effect
- 1888 Heinrich Hertz
discovers radio waves
- 1896 Antoine Becquerel
discovers the radioactivity of uranium
- 1897 Joseph Thomson
discovers the electron
- 1899 Ernest Rutheford
discovers that uranium radiation is composed of positively charged alpha
particles and negatively charged beta particles
- 1900 Max Planck states his
radiation law and Planck's constant
- 1905 Albert Einstein
completes his theory of special relativity
- 1913 Niels Bohr presents
his first quantum model of the atom
- 1913 Robert Millikan
measures the fundamental unit of charge
- 1915 Albert Einstein
completes his theory of general relativity
- 1927 Werner Heisenberg
states the quantum uncertainty principle
- 1929 Edwin Hubble
discovers the expansion of the universe
- 1932 James Chadwick
discovers the neutron
- 1932 Carl Anderson
discovers the positron
- 1933 Wolfgang Pauli
proposes the existence of neutrinos to account for an apparent violation
of energy conservation in certain nuclear reactions
- 1958 Charles Townes
invents the laser
- 1963 Murray Gell-Mann and
George Zweig propose the quark/aces model
- 1965 Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson discover the 3K background radiation
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