Timeline of scientific discoveries

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

Contents 1 Pre-History 2 3rd century BC 3 2nd century BC 4 2nd century 5 8th century 6 9th century 7 10th century 8 11th century 9 12th century 10 13th century 11 14th century 12 15th century 13 16th century 14 17th century 15 18th century 16 19th century 17 20th century 18 21st century 19 References 20 External links

Pre-History

• 400,000 years ago - Fire is discovered among early humans.^[1]

3rd century BC

• Eratosthenes: calculated the size of the earth and its distance to the sun and to the moon

2nd century BC

• 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

• Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber): beginning of chemistry and experimental method; discovery of hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric and acetic acids; discovery of soda, potash 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, purification by crystallisation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation, filtration and sublimation

9th century

• Al-Kindi (Alkindus): refutation of the theory of the transmutation of metals; and the concept of relativity

10th century

• 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 – Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics
• 1020s – Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine
• 1054 – Various Early Astronomers: Observe supernova (modern designation SN 1054), later correlated to the Crab Nebula.
• Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī: beginning of Islamic astronomy and Islamic science#Mechanics

12th century

• 1121 – Al-Khazini: variation of gravitation and gravitational potential energy at a distance; the decrease of air density with altitude
• 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 (a vague foreshadowing of a fundamental law of classical mechanics and a precursor to Newton's second law of motion)
• Averroes: relationship between force, work and kinetic energy

13th century

• 1220–1235 – Robert Grosseteste: rudimentals of the scientific method (see also: Roger Bacon)
• 1242 – Ibn al-Nafis: pulmonary circulation and circulatory system
• Theodoric of Freiberg: correct explanation of rainbow phenomenon
• William of Saint-Cloud: pioneering use of camera obscura to view solar eclipses^[2]

14th century

• Before 1327 – William of Ockham: Occam's Razor
• Oxford Calculators: the mean speed theorem
• Jean Buridan: theory of impetus
• Nicole Oresme: discovery of the curvature of light through atmospheric refraction^[3]

15th century

• 1494 – Luca Pacioli: first codification the Double-entry bookkeeping system, which slowly developed in previous centuries^[4]

16th century

• 1543 – Copernicus: heliocentric model
• 1543 – Vesalius: pioneering research into human anatomy
• 1552 – Michael Servetus: early research in Europe 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^[5]
• 1628 – William Harvey: Blood circulation
• 1643 – Evangelista Torricelli invents the mercury barometer
• 1662 – Robert Boyle: Boyle's law of ideal gas^[6]
• 1665 – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first peer reviewed scientific journal published.
• 1668 – Francesco Redi: disproved idea of spontaneous generation
• 1669 – Nicholas Steno: Proposes that fossils are organic remains embedded in layers of sediment, basis of stratigraphy
• 1669 – Jan Swammerdam: Species breed true
• 1675 – Leibniz, Newton: Infinitesimal calculus
• 1675 – Anton van Leeuwenhoek: Observes Microorganisms by Microscope
• 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

• 1745 – Ewald Jürgen Georg von Kleist first capacitor, the Leyden jar
• 1750 – Joseph Black: describes latent heat
• 1751 – Benjamin Franklin: Lightning is electrical
• 1761 - Mikhail Lomonosov: discovery of the atmosphere of Venus
• 1771 – Charles Messier: Publishes catalogue of astronomical objects (Messier Objects) now known to include galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae.
• 1778 – Antoine Lavoisier (and Joseph Priestley): discovery of oxygen leading to end of Phlogiston theory
• 1781 – William Herschel announces discovery of Uranus, expanding the known boundaries of the solar system for the first time in modern history
• 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 – Antoine Lavoisier: law of conservation of mass, basis for chemistry, and the beginning of modern chemistry
• 1796 – Georges Cuvier: Establishes extinction as a fact

19th century

• 1800 – Alessandro Volta: discovers electrochemical series and invents the 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
• 1830 - Nikolai Lobachevsky created Non-Euclidean geometry
• 1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction
• 1833 – Anselme Payen isolates first enzyme, diastase
• 1838 – Matthias Schleiden: all plants are made of cells
• 1838 – Friedrich Bessel: first successful measure of stellar parallax (to star 61 Cygni)
• 1842 – Christian Doppler: Doppler effect
• 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
• 1871 – Lord Rayleigh: Diffuse sky radiation (Rayleigh scattering) explains why sky appears blue
• 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
• 1900 – Max Planck: Planck's law of black body radiation, basis for quantum theory

20th century

• 1905 – Albert Einstein: theory of special relativity, explanation of Brownian motion, and photoelectric effect
• 1906 – Walther Nernst: Third law of thermodynamics
• 1909 – Fritz Haber: Haber Process
• 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
• 1920 – Arthur Eddington: Stellar nucleosynthesis
• 1924 – Wolfgang Pauli: quantum Pauli exclusion principle
• 1924 – Edwin Hubble: the discovery that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies
• 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, a potential fourth law of thermodynamics
• 1934 – Clive McCay: Calorie Restriction extends the maximum lifespan of another species Calorie_restriction#Research_history
• 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.
• 1948 – Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Freeman Dyson: Quantum electrodynamics
• 1951 – George Otto Gey propagates first cancer cell line, HeLa
• 1952 – Jonas Salk: developed and tested first polio vaccine
• 1953 – Crick and Watson: helical structure of DNA, basis for molecular biology
• 1963 – Lawrence Morley, Fred Vine, and Drummond Matthews: Paleomagnetic stripes in ocean crust as evidence of plate tectonics (Vine-Matthews-Morley hypothesis).
• 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 – 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. Andrew Wiles proves Fermats Last Theorem
• 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.
• 1997 – CDF and DØ experiments at Fermilab: Top quark.
• 1998 – Gerson Goldhaber and Saul Perlmutter observed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

21st century

• 2001 – The first draft of the human genome is completed.
• 2007 - James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin reported that they had reprogrammed regular skin cells to behave just like embryonic stem cells.
• 2010 – J. Craig Venter Institute creates the first synthetic bacterial cell.

References

1. ^ K. Kris Hirst (2011-10-31). "Discovery of Fire". about.com. http://archaeology.about.com/od/ancientdailylife/qt/fire_control.htm. Retrieved 2011-10-31. 
2. ^ Page 26, (2nd chapter) in: Ronald L. Numbers (ed.) Galileo Goes to Jail, and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Note: the first tree chapters of the book can be found here [1].
3. ^ "Kirschner, Stefan, "Nicole Oresme", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)". Plato.stanford.edu. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/nicole-oresme/. Retrieved 2011-08-12. 
4. ^ L.M. Smith (2008-10-01). "Luca Pacioli: The Father of Accounting". Acct.tamu.edu. http://acct.tamu.edu/smith/ethics/pacioli.htm. Retrieved 2011-08-11. 
5. ^ "John Napier and logarithms". Ualr.edu. http://ualr.edu/lasmoller/napier.html?utm_source=http://ualr.edu/~lasmoller/napier.html&utm_medium=700pxcustomerror404&utm_content=click&utm_campaign=custom404. Retrieved 2011-08-12. 
6. ^ [2]

External links

• Science Timeline