200px stylised lithium atom

Advances in Atomic Theory

  • 400

    Democritus

    Democritus
    Democritus suggested the first theory of atoms, saying all things were "composed of minute, invisible, indestructible particles of pure matter which move about eternally in infinite empty."
  • John Dalton

    John Dalton
    Dalton was a British schoolmaster and chemist. He first made inferences in the 19th century about how atoms bond together. He made up the "Dalton Atomic Theory" which was made up of 5 different theorys.
  • William Crookes

    William Crookes
    Crookes invented the Crookes tube in the early 1870's. He noticed that as you removed gas from a tube, a glow would appear if you place a high voltage across it. He noticed that a shadow would form if something was placed in the tube, so he believed some new kind of light was being produced. He called these cathode rays.
  • Dmitri Mendeleev

    Dmitri Mendeleev
    Mendeleev was a Russian chemist and inventor. He came up with his own Periodic Law and came up with the Periodic Table of Elements,
  • Henry Moseley

    Henry Moseley
    Moseley was an English physicist. He justified physical laws from previous empirical and chemical concept of the atomic number.
  • J.J. Thompson

    J.J. Thompson
    Thompson discovered the electron. Thompson created a tube that had a positively charged anode on one side and a negatively charged cathode on the other side.He then figured out electrons were present in atoms.
  • Ernest Rutherford

    Ernest Rutherford
    Rutherford did an experiment where he put hydrogen atoms between thin gold foil. and the results being revolutionary, they went straight through the foil.
  • Niels Bohr

    Niels Bohr
    Bohr had the "Bohr Theory of the Atom", which emphazised the idea that there were electrons around the nucleus.
  • Erwin Schrödinger

    Erwin Schrödinger
    Schrödinger viewed electrons as clouds and introduced "wave mechanics" as a mathematical model of the atom. He thought of the movement of an electron in an atom as a wave.