# 3 Appendix: Some highlights of physics

##

c. 624 BC | Birth of Thales of Miletus: traditionally 'the first physicist'.
384 BC | Birth of Aristotle: author of Physics.
1543 | Nicolaus Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium.
1600 | William Gilbert's De Magnete describing the behaviour of magnets.
1609 | Johannes Kepler's first and second laws published in Astronomia Nova.
1632 | Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World published.
1638 | Galileo's work on motion described in his Discorsi.
1687 | Newton's laws of motion and gravitation published in his Principia.
1704 | Newton's work on light and spectra described in his Opticks.
1729 | Stephen Gray discovers electrical conduction.
1736 | Leonhard Euler introduces differential equations into mechanics.
1755 | Euler lays the foundations of fluid mechanics.
1784 | Pierre Laplace introduces concept of electric potential.
1785 | Charles Coulomb announces his law of electrostatics.
1799 | Pierre Laplace's Méchanique Céleste (Volume 1).
1801 | Thomas Young demonstrates the wave nature of light.
1803 | John Dalton proposes his atomic theory of matter.
1820 | Hans Oersted demonstrates electromagnetism.
1821 | Michael Faraday demonstrates the principle of the electric motor.
1825 | Sadi Carnot lays the foundations of thermodynamics.
1843 | James Joule determines the mechanical equivalent of heat.
1847 | Hermann von Helmholtz formulates conservation of energy.
1848 | Lord Kelvin proposes the absolute temperature scale.
1849 | Armand Fizeau makes first accurate measurement of the speed of light.
1850 | Rudolf Clausius introduces entropy.
1859 | James Clerk Maxwell develops the kinetic theory of gases.
1865 | Maxwell's Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field.
1871 | Dmitry Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements.
1877 | Ludwig Boltzmann introduces statistical interpretation of entropy.
1882 | Albert Michelson measures the speed of light.
1887 | Michelson-Morley experiment fails to detect the ether.
1887 | Heinrich Hertz discovers photoelectric effect.
1888 | Heinrich Hertz demonstrates the existence of radio waves.
1895 | Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays.
1896 | Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity.
1897 | J. J. Thomson discovers the electron.
1900 | Max Planck introduces the quantum.
1905 | Einstein publishes papers on special relativity, Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect.
1911 | Ernest Rutherford announces discovery of the atomic nucleus.
1911 | Victor Hess discovers cosmic rays.
1913 | Niels Bohr's quantum theory of the atom.
1916 | Einstein's general theory of relativity.
1924 | Bose-Einstein statistics introduced.
1925 | Heisenberg introduces quantum mechanics (matrix form).
1925 | Wolfgang Pauli announces the exclusion principle.
1926 | Schrödinger introduces wave mechanics.
1926 | Bom's probability interpretation of quantum mechanics.
1926 | Fermi-Dirac statistics introduced.
1926 | Heisenberg formulates the uncertainty principle.
1928 | The Dirac equation describes relativistic electrons and leads to an understanding of spin and the prediction of antiparticles.
1929 | Edwin Hubble discovers the expansion of the Universe.
1932 | James Chadwick discovers the neutron.
1932 | Carl Anderson discovers the positron.
1934 | Fermi introduces the weak interaction.
1935 | Hideki Yukawa lays the foundation of the strong interaction.
1939 | Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner discover nuclear fission.
1948 | John Bardeen, William Brattain and William Shockley produce the transistor.
1948 | Feynman introduces his diagrams for quantum electrodynamics.
1948 | George Gamow proposes the basis of Big Bang theory.
1964 | Murray Gell-Mann introduces quarks.
1965 | Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discover cosmic microwave background radiation.
1967 | Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers first pulsar (a neutron star).
1968 | Steven Weinberg, Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow develop unified theory of electroweak interaction.
1972 | Fritsch, Gell-Mann and Bardeen develop quantum chromodynamics.
1977 | Klaus von Klitzing discovers the quantum Hall effect.
1980 | Alan Guth proposes an inflationary early Universe.
1981 | Green and Schwarz introduce superstring theory.
1982 | Alain Aspect conducts experiment demonstrating non-local aspects of quantum physics.
1986 | Bednorz and Mueller discover high-temperature superconductivity.
1991 | CERN confirms the existence of three generations of fundamental particles.
1995 | Witten and Townsend develop M-Theory.
1995 | Cornell, Wieman and Anderson discover Bose-Einstein condensate of atomic gas.

OpenLearn - The restless Universe
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.