History of the atom

Isaac Newton

Jan 1, 1704

• Born: December 25, 1642,

• Died: March 20, 1727,
• Full name: Isaac Newton
• Education: Trinity collage (1668),
• Proposed a mechanical universe with small solid masses in motion
• Discovered gravity
• Established the three universal laws of motion.

John Dalton

Oct 19, 1803

• Born 1766 in England
• Died 1844
• Proposed an “atomic theory” with spherical solid atoms based upon measurable properties of mass.
• Studied colour blindness
• Pioneer Meteorologist

Michael Faraday

Oct 19, 1832

Born: September 22, 1791, Hampshire
Died: August 25, 1867, Hampton Court Palace
• Michael Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to electromagnetism and electrochemistry
.• His main discoveries include those of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis
• He studied the effects of electricity on solutions.
• He came up with the term “electrolysis” which is the splitting of molecules with electricity.
• He developed laws of electrolysis.

Eugen Goldstein

Oct 19, 1878

Born: September 5, 1850, Gliwice
Died: December 25, 1930, Berlin
• Eugen Goldstein was a German physicist.
• He discovered canal rays and gave cathode rays their name.
• He was an early investigator of discharge tubes, the discoverer of anode rays.
• He is sometimes credited with the discovery of the proton.

Dmitri Mendeleev

Oct 19, 1896

Born: February 8, 1834, Tobolsk
Died: February 2, 1907, Saint Petersburg
Awards: Copley Medal, Demidov Prize
•Dmitri Mendeleev arranged all the elements into seven groups with similar properties he discovered that the properties of the elements “were periodic functions of their atomic weights” which is known as the periodic law or periodic table.
• Dmitri discovered three new unknown elements which he called aluminium, carbon, silicon.

Sir Joseph Jon Thomson

Oct 19, 1897

Born: December 18, 1856, Cheetham hill. England
Died: August 30, 1940, Cambridge.
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics, Copley Medal, Royal Medal.
• Study of cathode rays culminating in the discovery of the electron.
• Used a CRT to experimentally determine the charge to mass ratio (e/m) of an electron = 1.759 x 108 coulombs/gram.

Ernest Rutherford

Oct 19, 1898

•Born: August 30, 1871 Nelson New Zealand
•Died: October 19, 1937 Cambridge
• In 1898 he studied radiations emitted from uranium thorium and named them alpha and beta
• Using alpha particles as atomic bullets, probe the atoms in a piece of thin gold foil (0.00006cm). He established that the nucleus was very dense, very small and positively charged and assumed that the electrons were located outside the nucleus.

Max Planck

Oct 20, 1918

Born: April 23, 1858, Kiel
Died: October 4, 1947, Göttingen
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics, Copley Medal, Goethe Prize
• Max Planck, was a German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918
•The energy of resonator of frequency v is hv where h is a universal constant this is now called planks constant.

Albert Einstein

Oct 19, 1921

Born: March 14, 1879, Ulm
Died: April 18, 1955, Princeton
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics, Copley Medal, Franklin Medal
• Einstein explained the photoelectric effect.
• He dealt with problems of statistical mechanics and the problems in which they merged with quantum theory. Which led to the explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules.
• Albert Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity.

Niels Bohr

Oct 20, 1922

•Born October 7th 1885 and died November 18th 1962
• Born and educated in Copenhagen in Denmark
• Developed an explanation of atomic structure that underlies regularities of the periodic table of elements.
• His atomic model had atoms built up of successive orbital shells of electrons.
• Proposed electrons existed at set levels of energy.
• Won the Nobel prize in 1922.
• Worked under J.J. Thomson.

Robert Millikan

Oct 19, 1923

Born: March 22, 1868, Morrison
Died: December 19, 1953, San Marino
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics, Franklin Medal, Edison Medal, The ASME Medal
• Robert A. Millikan was an American experimental physicist.
• A Nobel laureate in physics for his measurement of the charge on the electron and for his work on the photoelectric effect.
• His law of motion of a particle falling towards the Earth after entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Werner Heisenberg

Oct 19, 1925

Born: December 5, 1901, Würzburg
Died: February 1, 1976, Munich
Education: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics, Max Planck medal
• Werner Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932 "for the creation of quantum mechanics
• He published his theory of quantum mechanics in 1925 at the age of 23

Louis de Broglie

Oct 20, 1929

Louis-Victor-Pierre-Raymond was a French physicist and a Nobel laureate in 1929.
Born: August 15, 1892, Dieppe
Died: March 19, 1987, LouveciennesEducation: University of Paris
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics
• Discovered that electrons had a dual nature similar to both particles and waves (particle/wave duality).
• Studied applications of wave mechanics to nuclear physics.

James Chadwick

Oct 20, 1932

• Born: October 20, 1891, Bollington
• Died: July 24, 1974, Cambridge
• Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics, Copley Medal,Franklin Medal
•James Chadwick used alpha particles to discover a neutral atomic particle with a mass close to a proton. He had discovered the neutron. He paved the way for fission of uranium 235 and eventually the creation of the atomic bomb.

Enrico Fermi

Oct 20, 1942

Born: September 29, 1901, Rome
Died: November 28, 1954, Chicago
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics, Franklin Medal, Matteucci Medal,Hughes Medal, Rumford Prize.
• Fermi was the greatest expert on neutrons.
• Conducted the first controlled nuclear chain reaction releasing energy from the atoms nucleus.
• He was a leader of physicists on the Manhattan project which developed nuclear energy and the atomic bomb.