History of Science

Father of Science

600 BCE

The earliest origins of science can be traced to 600 BCE, and a Greek philosopher named Thales. During this time, people believed that events like earthquakes and lightning were acts of God, perhaps to show his anger. Thales however, brought up a different thought, that maybe these evens had natural causes behind them.

Aristotle and empiricism

440 BCE

Aristotle, like Thales, was also a Greek philosopher, and gave an idea that would become the basis of science today. Instead of thinking about how the world could works, like other philosophers did, Aristotle proposed making observations, using inductive reasoning, evidence and logic. As said earlier, this is the basis of science now, and has been called empiricism.

Scientific Method

700

During the first 1000 years CE, Persian scholars were making big advancements in science. One of them was Geber, who came up with the scientific method and chemistry experimentation. He is now known as the father of chemistry.

Center of the Universe.

1550

Earth's place in the universe was once thought to be the center, but Copernicus, an astronomer, made arguments that the Sun was the center instead, and people believed him. And when Galileo perfected the telescope around 1600, it further backed the arguments by Copernicus.

Nobel Prize history

1903

Mary Curie was the first woman in history to win a Nobel Prize. Two of them, actually. One in 1903 for the discovery of radiation, and another in 1911 for the discover of radium and polonium elements.

Einstein's Theory

1916

You know who Albert Einstein is, so I'll make it quick. His theory of relativity relates matter and energy, as well as talking about how gravity isn't a property of matter, but of space and time. While the gravity theory doesn't apply to all cases, it is still the accepted theory.

C.V. Raman

1930

Raman was an Indian scientist who discovered how light traveled through transparent materials. For his duty, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930 and knighted in the British Empire.

Maria Goeppert-Mayer

1963

A German born scientist, Goeppert-Mayer, for her development of a new model of the nucleus of the atom, won the Nobel Prize in 1963, being the second woman after Marie Curie.

Ethics

1970

Beginning in the 1930s, medical researchers studied how a disease progressed using poor men in Alabama as test subjects. The problem was, they weren't told about the experiment or cured when one was found in the 1940s. They were lied to about having free medical care instead. The experiment was stopped after a newspaper received a tip from a whistleblower.

Ellen Ochoa

1993

Ochoa was the first Hispanic woman to go into space in 1993 for a nine day mission. She later became the Director of the Johnson Space Center in 2012.

Mario Molina

1995

Another Nobel Prize winner, this time in 1995. Molina won for helping discover pollution was destroying the ozone layer. He also received 18 honorary degrees and has an asteroid named after him.

Ada E. Yonath

2009

And one more Nobel Prize winner to wrap up the timeline (though Ada co-won the prize). Her award came from discoveries about ribosomes, which are structures in living cells that produce proteins.