burt.cabral.atomichistory.fall.2010

** Wiki Page **
 * __ Atomic History Timeline __**

** By 4/C Kevin Burt and 4/C Matthew Cabral **

** Ancient Times (Before 450 AD) **

Democritus Born: 460 BC Died: 370 BC  Country of Origin: Greece Year of Discovery: Unknown Bio: Philosopher and Mathematician from ancient Greece. His exact birth and death days are unknown. Democritus inherited a great amount of property, and did much travelling in the East, searching for information. Discovery: Democritus theorized that everything was composed of atoms, which were physically invisible, indestructible, and always in motion. He believed that between atoms was empty space, and that atoms differed in shape, size, and mass.

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** 1700-1800 **

Isaac Newton Date of Birth: January 4, 1643 Date of Death: March 31, 1727 Country of Origin: England Year of Discovery: 1704 Bio: English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian. He was born prematurely three months after the death of his father in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth in Lincolnshire. When he was three, his mother left him in the care of his maternal grandmother. He disliked his stepfather, and hated farming. The top-ranked student at his grade school, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, and has made many important contributions to the field of science Discovery: Light was made of tiny particles, and ordinary matter was made of slightly larger particles. [] []

** 1800-1875 **

John Dalton Date of Birth: September 6,1766 Date of Death: July 27, 1844 Country of Origin: England Year of Discovery: 1803 Bio: Born into a Quaker family in Eaglesfield in Cumberland, England, Dalton was the son of a weaver. He helped his older brother to run a Quaker school at age fifteen. He originally considered studying law or medicine, but eventually became a teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy before moving on to becoming a scientist. Discovery: Created an atomic theory which states: the atoms of a given element are different from those of any other element, and have different weights; all atoms of a given element are identical; atoms can be combined to form chemical compounds; atoms cannot be created, divided, or destroyed; and all elements are made of tiny particles called atoms. [] [] []

Dmitri Mendeleev Date of Birth: February 8, 1834 Date of Death: February 2, 1907 Country of Origin: Russia Year of Discovery: 1869 Bio: Mendeleev was the last of fourteen children, born in Siberia to Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva. His family became poor after his father died and his mother’s glass factory burnt down, and he attended the Gymnasium in Tobolsk at age thirteen. Later on, he became a professor for chemistry, and eventually was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was recommended to win the Nobel Prize for chemistry for two years, but was voted down both times. Discovery: Mendeleev organized all the known elements into the first periodic table, as well as predicted several new elements which would later be discovered and named germanium, gallium, and scandium. [] [] [] []


 * 1875-1900 **

Wilhelm C. Roentgen Date of Birth: March 27, 1845 Date of Death: February 10, 1923 Country of Origin: Germany Year of Discovery: 1895 Bio: Roentgen was born in Lennep in Rhenish Prussia, the only child of a merchant and cloth manufacturer. He was expelled from one of his schools for refusing to reveal the identity of a classmate that had drawn a bad picture of one of the teachers, and had difficulty finding another school. He studied mechanical engineering at Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, and became a favorite student of Professor August Kundt, following University of Strassburg Discovery: While investiaging the external effects from vacuum tube equipment, Roentgen discovered that the cathode rays created a fluorescent image on a small cardboard screen painted with barium platinocyanide, calling the rays X-Rays. [] []

Henri Becquerel Date of Birth: December 15, 1852 Date of Death: August 25, 1908 Country of Origin: France Year of Discovery: 1896 Bio: Born in Paris, studied science at Ecole Polytechnique and engineering at Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees. He eventually won the Nobel Prize for Physics, the Rumford Medal, The Helmholtz Medal, and the Barnard Medal. Discovery: While investigating phosphorescence in uranium salts, Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity. [] []



J.J. Thomson Date of Birth: December 18, 1856 Date of Death: August 30, 1940 Country of Origin: Britain Year of Discovery: 1897 Bio: Born in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England. His father ran an antiquarian bookshop. He originally went to small, private schools. In 1870 he was admitted to Owens College at an unusually-young age. His father died in 1873, and he moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge. He later became a physics professor and won several Nobel Prizes. Discovery: Through explorations of the properties of cathode rays, Thomson discovered that atoms contained particles called electrons, and made the plum pudding model.

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Marie Curie Date of Birth: November 7, 1867 Date of Death: July 4, 1934 Country of Origin: Poland Year of Discovery: 1898 Bio: Born in Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, she went to study in Paris, where she obtained degrees and conducted scientific work. She won a Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie, and won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. She is the only woman to win a Nobel Prize in two different fields. She eventually died from aplastic anemia, which was most likely contracted from radiation exposure. Discovery: Discovered radioactivity by processing tones of pitchblend with her husband to extract two elements which they named polonium and radium. [] []


 * 1900-1915**

Albert Einstein Date of Birth: March 14, 1879 Date of Death: April 18, 1955 Country of Origin: Germany Year of Discovery: 1905 Bio: Born in Ulm in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg in the German Empire, his father was a salesman and engineer. He did much travelling throughout his life, going to all parts of the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. Later in life, Einstein moved to America to escape the onslaught of the rising Nazi power in Europe, and eventually Discovery: Wrote a special relativity paper and created the equation E=mc2 [] []

Robert Millikan Date of Birth: March 22, 1868 Date of Death: December 19, 1953 Country of Origin: United States Year of Discovery: 1909 Bio: Millikan went to high school in Maquoketa, Iowa, and received a Bachelor’s degree in the classics from Oberlin College in 1891, and a doctorate in physics from Columbia University in 1895. He was also the first to earn a Ph.D. from that department. Discovery: Used the oil-drop experiment to determine the charge and mass of an electron [] []

Ernest Rutherford Date of Birth: August 30, 1871 Date of Death: October 19, 1937 Country of Origin: New Zealand Year of Discovery: 1911 Bio: New Zealand-born British Chemist, knighted in 1914 and awarded the Hector Memorial Medal in 1916. Discovery: Using the Gold foil experiment, Rutherford determined that the atom was mostly empty space, with a minute and extremely dense nucleus. [] []

** 1915-1950 **

Niels Bohr Date of Birth: October 7, 1885 Date of Death: November 18, 1962 Country of Origin: Compenhagen, Denmark Year of Discovery: 1922 Bio: Came up with the liquid droplet theory. Which was the base of nuclear fission.

Discovery: models DeBrogalie’s idea

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Louis DeBrogalie Date of Birth: August 15, 1892 Date of Death: March 19, 1987 Country of Origin: Pierre, France Year of Discovery: 1923 Bio: He was the one to come across electronic waves. Discovery: electrons in specific orbital levels [] []

Werner Heisenberg Date of Birth: December 5, 1901 Date of Death: February 1, 1976 Country of Origin: Munich, Germany Year of Discovery: 1927 Bio:Heisenberg came up with the principle of uncertainty, he also studied thermonuclear processes. Discovery: Proposed the Principle of Indeterminancy [] []

Erwin Schrodinger Date of Birth: August 12, 1887 Date of Death: January 9, 1961 Country of Origin: Vienna, Austria Year of Discovery: 1930 Bio: He was a teacher at certain schools and was highly involved in certain discovers like electromagnetism and was very interested in physics. Discovery: Electrons as continuous clouds and introduced have mechanics [] []

James Chadwick Date of Birth: October 20, 1981 Date of Death: July 24, 1974 Country of Origin: Chesire, England Year of Discovery: 1932 Bio: He grew up and England and was in war, became a scientists study Rutherford’s theories and found the existence of neutrons. Discovery: Discovered the Neutron [] []