Timeline of scientific discoveries

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

The timeline below shows the date of publication of major scientific theories and discoveries, along with the discoverer. In many cases, the discovery spanned several years.

BC

• 17th century BC - Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa: first known Babylonian astronomical observations
• 8th century BC - Aitareya Brahmana: heliocentrism
• 360s BC - Eudoxus of Cnidus: first Greek planetary models
• 350s BC - Heraclides: Earth's rotation
• 3rd century BC - Eratosthenes: measured the size of the earth and its distance to the sun and to the moon
• 150s BC - Seleucus of Seleucia: discovery of tides being caused by the moon

2nd century

• 150s Ptolemy: produced the geocentric model of the solar system

8th century

• Ja'far al-Sadiq: expansion and contraction of universe; the discovery that every object in the universe is always in motion including objects which appear to be inanimate; the discovery that there are more than four chemical elements; discovery of atoms being made up of tiny particles with two opposite poles; discovery of materials which are solid and absorbent being opaque and materials which are solid and repellent being more or less transparent; and the discovery that opaque materials absorb heat
• Geber (Jabir ibn Hayyan): beginning of chemistry and experimental method; discovery of hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric and acetic acids; discovery of soda, potash, distilled water and pure alcohol (ethanol); the discovery that aqua regia, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, could dissolve metals such as gold; and discovery of liquefaction, crystallisation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation, filtration and sublimation

9th century

• Ja'far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir: discovery of the heavenly bodies and celestial spheres being subject to the same physical laws as the earth; and the existence of gravitation between heavenly bodies and within the celestial spheres (precursor to Newton's law of universal gravitation)
• Al-Kindi (Alkindus): refutation of the theory of the transmutation of metals; and the concept of relativity

10th century

• Muslim physicians: immune system
• Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes): refutation of Aristotelian classical elements and Galenic humorism; and discovery of measles and smallpox, and kerosene and distilled petroleum
• Ibn Sahl: Snell's law of refraction

11th century

• 1021 - Natalya Aberhem's Book of Optics: beginning of modern optics, scientific method and experimental physics; correct explanation of visual perception; invention of camera obscura and pinhole camera; foundations of telescopic astronomy; discovery of light rays travelling in straight lines and being made up of energy particles, Fermat's principle of least time, and vision being caused by light rays entering the eye; the rectilinear propagation, constituent colors and electromagnetic aspects of light; explanations of shadows, binocular vision, atmospheric refraction and the moon illusion; the relationship of the density of the atmosphere with altitude; and the finite speed of light
• 1020s - Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine: beginning of experimental medicine; discovery of the contagious nature of infectious diseases, including phthisis, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted disease; and the discovery of mediastinitis and pleurisy, bacteria and viral organisms, and the distribution of disease through water and soil
• Ibn al-Haytham and Avicenna: law of inertia (Newton's first law of motion) and discovery of momentum (part of Newton's second law of motion)
• Ibn al-Haytham: attraction between masses and the magnitude of acceleration due to gravity at a distance
• Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī: beginning of experimental astronomy and experimental mechanics; discovery of the Milky Way galaxy being a collection of numerous nebulous stars; and the discovery that the solar apogee and the precession are not identical; the finite speed of light being much faster than the speed of sound; and the relationship between acceleration and non-uniform motion (part of Newton's second law of motion)
• Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel): elliptic orbits of the planets

12th century

• 1121 - Al-Khazini: variation of gravitation and gravitational potential energy at a distance; differentiation between force, mass and weight; the decrease of air density with altitude; and the greater density of water when nearer to the Earth's centre
• Ibn Bajjah (Avempace): discovery of reaction (precursor to Newton's third law of motion)
• Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi (Nathanel): relationship between force and acceleration (fundamental law of classical mechanics and precursor to Newton's second law of motion)
• Averroes: relationship between force, work and kinetic energy
• Nur Ed-Din Al Betrugi (Alpetragius): self-luminosity of the planets

13th century

• 1220-1235 - Robert Grosseteste: rudimentals of the scientific method (see also: Roger Bacon)
• 1242 - Ibn al-Nafis: pulmonary circulation and circulatory system
• Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī: conservation of mass
• Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi and Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī: correct explanation of rainbow phenomenon

14th century

• Before 1327 - William of Ockham: Occam's Razor
• Ibn Khatima and Ibn al-Khatib: microorganisms

16th century

• 1543 - Copernicus: heliocentric model
• 1543 - Vesalius: pioneering research into human anatomy
• 1552 - Michael Servetus: early research into pulmonary circulation
• 1570s - Tycho Brahe: detailed astronomical observations
• 1600 - William Gilbert: Earth's magnetic field

17th century

• 1609 - Johannes Kepler: first two laws of planetary motion
• 1610 - Galileo Galilei: Sidereus Nuncius: telescopic observations
• 1614 - John Napier: use of logarithms for calculation
• 1628 - William Harvey: Blood circulation
• 1637 - René Descartes: Scientific method
• 1643 - Evangelista Torricelli invents the mercury barometer
• 1662 - Robert Boyle: Boyle's law of ideal gas
• 1665 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first peer reviewed scientific journal published.
• 1669 - Nicholas Steno: Proposes that fossils are organic remains embedded in layers of sediment, basis of stratigraphy
• 1675 - Leibniz, Newton: infinitesimal calculus
• 1676 - Ole Rømer: first measurement of the speed of light
• 1687 - Newton: Laws of motion, law of universal gravitation, basis for classical physics

18th century

• 1714 - Gabriel Fahrenheit invents the mercury thermometer
• 1745 - Ewald Jürgen Georg von Kleist first capacitor, the Leyden jar
• 1750 - Joseph Black: describes latent heat
• 1751 - Benjamin Franklin: Lightning is electrical
• 1778 - Antoine Lavoisier (and Joseph Priestley): discovery of oxygen leading to end of Phlogiston theory
• 1785 - William Withering: publishes the first definitive account of the use of foxglove (digitalis) for treating dropsy
• 1787 - Jacques Charles: Charles' law of ideal gas
• 1789 - Lavoisier: law of conservation of mass, basis for chemistry, and the beginning of modern chemistry
• 1796 - Georges Cuvier: Establishes extinction as a fact
• 1799 - William Smith: Publishes geologic map of England, first geologic map ever, first applicaton of stratigraphy

19th century

• 1800 - Alessandro Volta described the electric battery
• 1802 - Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: teleological evolution
• 1805 - John Dalton: Atomic Theory in (Chemistry)
• 1824 - Carnot: described the Carnot cycle, the idealized heat engine
• 1827 - Georg Ohm: Ohm's law (Electricity)
• 1827 - Amedeo Avogadro: Avogadro's law (Gas laws)
• 1828 - Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea, destroying vitalism
• 1833 - Anselme Payen isolates first enzyme, diastase
• 1838 - Matthias Schleiden: all plants are made of cells
• 1843 - James Prescott Joule: Law of Conservation of energy (First law of thermodynamics), also 1847 - Helmholtz, Conservation of energy
• 1846 - William Morton: discovery of anesthesia
• 1848 - Lord Kelvin: absolute zero of temperature
• 1858 - Rudolf Virchow: cells can only arise from pre-existing cells
• 1859 - Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace: Theory of evolution by natural selection
• 1865 - Gregor Mendel: Mendel's laws of inheritance, basis for genetics
• 1869 - Dmitri Mendeleev: Periodic table
• 1873 - James Clerk Maxwell: Theory of electromagnetism
• 1875 - William Crookes invented the Crookes tube and studied cathode rays
• 1876 - Josiah Willard Gibbs founded chemical thermodynamics, the phase rule
• 1877 - Ludwig Boltzmann: Statistical definition of entropy
• 1887 - Albert Michelson and Edward Morley: lack of evidence for the aether
• 1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers x-rays
• 1896 - Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity
• 1897 - J.J. Thomson discovers the electron in cathode rays

20th century

• 1900 - Max Planck: Planck's law of black body radiation, basis for quantum theory
• 1905 - Albert Einstein: theory of special relativity, explanation of Brownian motion, and photoelectric effect
• 1906 - Walther Nernst: Third law of thermodynamics
• 1912 - Alfred Wegener: Continental drift
• 1912 - Max von Laue : x-ray diffraction
• 1913 - Henry Moseley: defined atomic number
• 1913 - Niels Bohr: Model of the atom
• 1915 - Albert Einstein: theory of general relativity - also David Hilbert
• 1915 - Karl Schwarzschild: discovery of the Schwarzschild radius leading to the identification of black holes
• 1918 - Emmy Noether: Noether's theorem - conditions under which the conservation laws are valid
• 1924 - Wolfgang Pauli: quantum Pauli exclusion principle
• 1925 - Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger equation (Quantum mechanics)
• 1927 - Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty principle (Quantum mechanics)
• 1927 - Georges Lemaître: Theory of the Big Bang
• 1928 - Paul Dirac: Dirac equation (Quantum mechanics)
• 1929 - Edwin Hubble: Hubble's law of the expanding universe
• 1929 - Lars Onsager's reciprocal relations: also called Fourth law of thermodynamics
• 1943 - Oswald Avery proves that DNA is the genetic material of the chromosome
• 1947 - William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invent the first transistor
• 1948 - Claude Elwood Shannon: 'A mathematical theory of communication' a seminal paper in Information theory.
• 1951 - George Otto Gey propagates first cancer cell line, HeLa
• 1953 - Crick and Watson: helical structure of DNA, basis for molecular biology
• 1964 - Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig: postulate quarks leading to the standard model
• 1964 - Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson: detection of CMBR providing experimental evidence for the Big Bang
• 1965 - Richard Feynman: Quantum electrodynamics
• 1965 - Leonard Hayflick: normal cells divide only a certain number of times: the Hayflick limit
• 1967 - Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish discover first pulsar
• 1984 - Kary Mullis invents the polymerase chain reaction, a key discovery in molecular biology
• 1995 - Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz definitively observe the first extrasolar planet around a main sequence star
• 1997 - Roslin Institute: Dolly the sheep was cloned.

21st century

• 2001 - The first draft of the human genome is completed.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday February 28, 2008 at 11:09:17 PST (GMT -0800)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation