-
350
Aristotle
Aristotle, living from 384 BC to 322 BC, was a Greek philosopher and scientist who is known as the founding father of science as a field of study. Despite this, he did not believe in the atomic theory and taught his students that everything was made up of small parts of the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. -
370
Democritus
Democritus, living from 460 BC to 370 BC, was an important Greek philosopher who was famous for creating an atomic theory of the universe. The theory was that everything is composed of atoms, which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible. Between atoms, there lies empty space, Atoms are indestructible, and have always been and always will be in motion. There is an infinite number of atoms and of kinds of atoms, which differ in shape and size. -
Lavoisier
Lavoisier, a French chemist living from 1743 to 1794 is famous for making one of the first major breakthroughs in the study of chemical reactions. His experiments resulted in him coming up with one of the most fundamental laws of chemistry, the law of conservation matter. This law states that matter is conserved in a chemical reaction. -
Dalton
Dalton was a British chemist who is famous for pioneering his work in developing the modern atomic theory. His research came up with that all matter is made of atoms, atoms are indivisible and indestructible, and compounds are formed by a combination of two or more different types of atoms. -
Mendeleev
Mendeleev was a Russian chemist born in 1834 and died in 1907. He is mainly known for putting the first 63 elements in order by atomic mass. This is known as the periodic table. -
JJ Thompson
JJ Thompson was a British physicist and professor at Cambridge University. He discovered the electron by experimenting with cathode ray tubes. He showed that cathode rays were always negative. -
Planck
Planck was a German physicist who worked on quantum theory. He won a Nobel Prize in 1918 for his work in physics. His work really contributed to our understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. -
Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist. He became famous for his theory of relativity. This theory laid the foundation for atomic energy. -
Millikan
Millikan was an American experimental physicist. He came up with the oil drop experiment which proved the charge of an electron. This greatly contributed to our understanding of the structure of an atom and atomic theory -
Rutherford
Rutherford was a physicist from New Zealand. He is now known as the father of nuclear physics. His gold foil experiment demonstrated that an atom has a small, heavy nucleus. -
Bohr
Bohr was a Danish physicist who won a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum theory in 1922. His theory, based on quantum theory, said that energy is transferred only in certain well defined quantities. Electrons move around the nucleus but only in prescribed orbits. When they from one orbit to another with lower energy, a light quantum is emitted. -
de Broglie
de Broglie, a French physicist, made groundbreaking contributions in quantum theory. He predicted the wave nature of electrons. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929. -
Hund
Hund was a German physicist who worked on quantum theory. He made very important contributions to quantum theory concerning the structure of an atom and the molecular spectra. He also discovered quantum tunneling. -
Heisenberg
Heisenberg was a key pioneer of quantum mechanics. He was the driving force in creating quantum mechanics which is used for interpreting the behavior or elemental particles and elements. -
Schrodinger
Schrodinger was a Austrian physicist who won the Nobel Prize. He developed an "electron cloud model". It consisted of a dense nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons at various orbital levels. -
Chadwick
Chadwick was an English physicist and Nobel Prize winner. He became widely famous when he bombarded beryllium atoms with alpha particles. The result was an unknown radiation. He interpreted this radiations as being composed of neutrally charged particles. These particles had similar mass to protons. They became known as neutrons.
