Atomic Timeline

  • 440 BCE

    Plato

    Plato
    theorized that these solid forms of matter are composed of indivisible elements shaped like triangles.
  • 400 BCE

    Democritus

    Democritus
    believed that atoms were uniform, solid, hard, incompressible, and indestructible, and that they moved in infinite numbers through empty space until stopped.
  • Antone Lavoisier

    Antone Lavoisier
    defined that matter was composed of atoms that were not created or destroyed during chemical reactions.
  • Billiard Ball Model

    Billiard Ball Model
    defined an atom to be a ball-like structure
  • Robert Boyle

    Robert Boyle
    demonstrated that matter is made up of tiny particles that he called corpuscles which is what we call an atom today.
  • John Dalton

    John Dalton
    he thought that 1, elements consist of indivisible small particles and 2, all atoms of the same element are identical, and different atoms have different elements.
  • Amedeo Avogadro

    Amedeo Avogadro
    he had 2 hypotheses: (1) equal volume of gas contains equal number of molecules. (2) elementary gases such as hydrogen, nitrogen, etc. consist of 2 atoms.
  • Dmitri Mendeleev

    Dmitri Mendeleev
    formed a new law and built a systematic table of all 70 elements known.
  • Pierre and Marie Curie

    Pierre and Marie Curie
    suggested that powerful rays or energy, the polonium and radium gave off were actually particles from tiny atoms that were disinegrating inside elements.
  • Solar System Model

    Solar System Model
    describes atoms as consisting of a nucleus with a number of electrons in orbits around the nucleus.
  • JJ Thompson

    JJ Thompson
    proposed a model of the atom in which negative electrons are scattered throughout a sphere of positive change.
  • Plum Pudding Model

    Plum Pudding Model
    depicts the electrons as negatively-charged particles embedded in a sea of positive charges.
  • Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein
    mathematically proved the existence of atoms and their sizes.
  • Robert Millikan

    Robert Millikan
    Millikan's work demonstrated that electrons did have a discrete, quantifiable change.
  • Ernest Rutherford

    Ernest Rutherford
    described the atom as having a tiny, dense, and positively charged core called the nucleus.
  • Neils Bohr

    Neils Bohr
    proposed a theory for the structure of atoms and the Bohr Model.
  • Henry G. J. Mosely

    Henry G. J. Mosely
    formed the Mosely Law, that states that the square root of the frequency of the X-ray emitted by an atom is proportional to its atomic number.
  • Electron Cloud Model

    Electron Cloud Model
    shows a particular area in which an electron is likely to be.
  • James Chadwich

    James Chadwich
    found that the atoms consisted of protons and electrons and another sub-atomic particle called the nucleus.
  • The Alchemists

    The Alchemists
    the alchemists believed that all metals were formed from 2 principles= mercury and sulfur