1900-1915ml

Marie Curie is the most famous women in chemistry who theorized that the basis of modern chemistry was wrong. She worked to discover 2 new radioactive elements, Polonium and radium, winning her the Noble Prize in chemistry in 1935. While earlier in her career her work with radiation won her a Nobel Prize for Physics. Her revolutionary theory stated atoms were not indestructible, or the smallest things there are. The radiation coming off of radium proved that the atom was capable of decay and that the pieces coming off of it showed that there were parts in an atom. This changed the basis of modern chemistry. Marie Curie was born in Warsaw in 1867, and studied at local schools till 1891 when she went to Paris to continue her studies in math and physics. She met her husband Pierre, a teacher in the school of physics and married a year later, and then when he died in 1906 she took his place as professor of general physics. She worked and lived till 1934. [] []
 * __Marie Curie__**

** --Robert Millikan ** Robert Andrews Millikan was born on the 22nd of March, 1868 in Morrison, Illinois. Millikan made his discovery in the year 1910. He had been an elementary physics teacher. While partaking in this job he developed an interest in molecular physics. He then attained his mastership in physics, and received a Ph.D. for research in the polarization of light emitted by incandescent surfaces. On an investigation of his professors, Millikan spent a year in Germany at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen, and returned at the invitation of A.A.Nichelson, to become an assistant to their new laboratory. In the year 1910 Millikan discovered the accurate determination of the charge carried by an electron. He came to these results using the "falling-drop method"; also he proved this quantity was constant for all electrons. Millikan’s experiment measured the force on tiny charged droplets of oil suspended against gravity between two metal electrodes. Knowing the electric field, the charge on the droplet could be determined. Repeating the experiment for many droplets, Millikan showed that the results could be explained as integer multiples of a common value (1.592 × 10−19 coulomb), the charge on a single electron. He received of the Comstock Prize of the National Academy of Sciences, of the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, of the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of Great Britain, and of the Nobel Prize for Physics 1923. With this experiment proven we learned that the mass of an electron is at least 1000 times smaller than the smallest atom. []

** Ernest Rutherford  ** Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand. He made his discovery in the year 1909. Rutherford had received an early education in government schools and entered Nelson Collegiate School at the age of 16.Later he had a double first in Mathematics and Physical Science and continued with research work at college. In 1897 he was awarded the B.A. Research Degree and the Cotts-Trotter Studentship of Trinity College. The Discovery that Rutherford made was named the gold-foil experiment. This experiment was composed of a particle emitter, Gold foil, and a Detecting Screen. What the experiment did was to emitting a beam of alpha particles toward the gold foil only 1/3000 of an in thick, and has them scatter into the detecting screen. When he completed the experiment most of the particles went right through the foil, but some of the particles had bounced back, as if they had hit something solid Rutherford realized that the atom must have almost all its mass and positive charge in a nucleus about 10,000 times smaller than the atom itself. Also proving that the negative charge must be in the electrons, and they orbit around the nucleus. This discovery proved that Atoms are made up mostly of empty space. || [] [] [|http://www.rsc.org/chemsoc/timeline//pages/1911.html]

**Losi.Mcneil.Atomic.Historytimeline.fall.2009**