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610 BCE
Anaximander
Anaximander is responsible for the idea that the earth needs nothing below it to support it. He said that the earth floats in the center of infinity and simultaneously introduced the idea of a force of attraction between the earth and the planets and stars in the heavens. -
287 BCE
Archimedes
Archimedes, is the most famous mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece. Archimedes is especially important for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder. -
1543
Heliocentrism
The sun is the center and all the planets surrounds it. Nicolaus Copernicus defied this theory with his own saying that the sun is the center and all the other planets orbited around the sun sadly for most people who supported this theory were persecuted by the church, and actually Nicolaus Copernicus wasn’t the first to establish this theory but without a doubt he was the more influential one and the one who spread it across the world. -
1564
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei was born Pisa. He began to study medicine at the University of Pisa but changed to philosophy and mathematics.
In 1614, Galileo was accused of heresy for his support of the Copernican theory that the sun was at the center of the solar system. This was revolutionary at a time when most people believed the Earth was in this central position -
1571
Johannes Kepler
He was a German astronomer who discovered three major laws of planetary motion, conventionally designated as follows: the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; the “area law”; and the “harmonic law”. -
Galileo’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment
One would normally think that if you throw two objects, of different weights at the same height and at the same time, the heavier object will hit the ground sooner. But Galileo Galilei proved the opposite. Between 1589 and 1592, He threw balls of different weights and verified that they reached the ground at the same time. -
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton, an English psychist began developing his theories on light, calculus and celestial mechanics while on break from Cambridge University. Years of research culminated with the 1687 publication of “Principia,” a landmark work that established the universal laws of motion and gravity. -
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday, was an English physicist and chemist whose many experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism. Did you know? Faraday invented the rubber balloon while experimenting with gases. -
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell, was a Scottish physicist best known for his formulation of electromagnetic theory. -
Discovery of Electromagnetic Induction
The idea alluded to is that of electromagnetic induction, which draws on the idea that a changing magnetic field across an electrical conductor will elicit an electrical current, which can be used elsewhere. Michael Faraday discovered, followed by Joseph Henry a year later, showed us the way to efficiently powering our day to day lives, although they had no idea of this at the time. -
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford is known for his pioneering studies of radioactivity and the atom. He discovered that there are two types of radiation, alpha and beta particles, coming from uranium. He found that the atom consists mostly of empty space, with its mass concentrated in a central positively charged nucleus. -
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein, was a German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. -
Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who contributed to the understanding of the atom and quantum mechanics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. -
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin’s greatest contribution was also in quantum mechanics and it was something rather simple but important and that was the visualization of electrons has waves being compared to Heinsberg’s matrix but was proved that although they were slightly different in some parts mathematically, they were equivalent -
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg, was a German physicist and philosopher who discovered a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. -
Paul Dirac
His greatest contribution is attributed to quantum mechanics with the “Dirac Equation” which explained the behavior of electrons, their traveling speed and even predicted the existence of antimatter, has a plus he also was a certain inspiration that led Richard Feynman to his path integrals. -
Discovery of Atomic Nucleus
Ernest Rutherford and his colleagues changed our view of matter, by daring to divide the indivisible. These physicists discovered the electron and the positively charged nucleus, before unearthing the proton and the neutron, which made up the latter. The resulting Rutherford-Bohr Model of the atom laid the groundwork for nuclear physics and its applications for years to come. -
Richard Feynman
He was born in NY. Feynman greatly contributed in physics such has the development of Dirac’s Lagrangian formulation into a complete method he also developed the language of Feynman diagrams which are indispensable for calculations in quantum field theories and also made theories on how the world would change if scientists could manipulate individual atoms and at the time this wasn’t popular recently without technology advances, we are getting near to what he once imaginated. -
Quantum Mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. -
Albert Einstein’s Theory of Everything
His theory of relativity was not perfect by any means, but in attempting to explain how energy, mass and motion relate to one another, he laid the groundwork for that fabled, unified Theory of Everything that may one day describe how matter interacts in all scenarios across the universe. His theory has led to better explanations of some of the everyday effects we see in our lives like light and color, as well as the extreme phenomena of black holes and supernovae.
