-
460
Democritus
• He was an ancient Greek philosopher
• He lived from 460BC to 370BC
.• He was the first person to use the term atom and propose that atoms were mechanically bound together
• Many people call him the father of Modern Science
• He found that if atoms stayed together, they would have had to have a system
• The atom depended on analogies from human senses.
• Using the analogies, he gave a picture of the atom, which distinguished one from another by its size, shape and arrangement of the atoms parts -
Antoine Lavoisier
• Antoine Lavoisier was born in France in 1743 and died in 1794
• He was a French chemist, who was noticed for his caloric theory (heat was hypothesized to be a fluid-like, indestructible mass-less particle), which it causes expansion in bodies.
• Between 1768 and 1787, he published over 60 papers about his theory of combustion -
Antoine Lavoisier
• Lavoisier’s caloric theory of combustion somehow found its way to the physicists of the world (only by he’s famous publication of the 1789 textbook called Elements of Chemistry
• He was an important player in the early development of science on thermochemistry, in particular the construction and use of an ice-calorimeter in 1782 (working with French mathematician Pierre Laplace to determine the heat released in combustion reactions)
•He was considered as one of the founders of modern chemistry -
Antoine Lavoisier
• He was also considered as one of the founders of modern chemistry, as for his experimental work on compounds, help in devising a system of chemical nomenclature and an explanation of combustion
• He introduced the combustion theory of animal heat in 1780
• In 1782, he discussed his opinions and views on the nature of the energies and forces involved in the dissolution of metals in acids, eg- the process of dissolving a metal in nitric acid -
John Dalton
• John Dalton was an English chemist with a Quaker background
• He lived from 1766-1844
• His atomic theory was that all matter is made up of atoms and that they are indivisible and indestructible.
• That all atoms were given a certain element to identify in mass and properties
• That compounds are formed by a combination of two or more different atoms -
John Dalton
• That a chemical reaction is a rearrangement of atoms.
• Dalton’s theory helped to explain chemical phenomena
• His theory quickly became the theoretical foundation in chemistry -
Julius Plucker
• Julius Plucker was born in Bonn, Germany on the 16th of June 1801 and died on the 22nd of May 1868
• He was a German mathematician, chemist and physicist
• He was the first to identify and experiment the electron rays, which were produced from a vacuum
• But he didn’t know about the existence of electrons during his discovery in 1859, so he called them cathode rays
•He later discovered that cathode rays were deflected by magnets His research on cathode rays, then went further to atomic theory -
Henri Becquerel
• Henri Becquerel was born in France on the 15th of December 1852 and died on the 25th of August 1908
• He was born in an affluent family of French physicists and chemists and all of them were also interested in science
• He did his own researched and was influenced by the discovery that Wilhelm Roentgen discovered of X-Rays
• In 1896, he was able to gather a sufficient supply of fluorescent materials to mount his own studies into the discovery he made of X-Rays -
Henri Becquerel
• He created a mixture of uranium and potassium, in which he exposed to sunlight for a length of time, and he then placed it on a photographic plate, in which it was wrapped in black paper
• After he developed the photographic plate and noticed they exhibit an image of uranium crystals on it, he said that the uranium had absorbed the sun’s energy to transform into the X-Ray -
Henri Becquerel
• After that, in which his thought was wrong (but he would soon discover that), he discovered radioactivity, which was a spontaneous emission of radiation by a certain material due to decomposition • For his discovery, that helped for a better understanding of X-Rays he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 -
Joesph John Thompson
• In1904, he suggested that a model of an atom would be in a shape of a sphere with positive matter in which electrons are positioned by electrostatic forces.• Thompson’s improved instrument, in which his assistant and Francis Aston made, was able to discover isotopes (atoms of the same element, but with different atomic weights). -
Joesph John Thompson
• Joseph John Thompson was a British physicist
• He lived from 18th of December 1856 to the 30th of August 1940
• In 1897, he discovered the electron through a number of experiments he did, to study the nature of electric discharge, (in a high-vacuum cathode-ray tube).
• He interpreted the deflection of the rays by electrically charged plates and magnets as evidence of “bodies much smaller than atoms,” in which he then calculated as having a very large value for the charge-to-mass ratio -
Max Planck
• Max Planck was born in Kiel, Germany on the 23rd of April 1858 and died on the 4th of October 1947
• He was known for creating h in Eq=hv (Planck’s Constant)
• He studied produced light from heated objects
• He found out that matter could only be gained or lost in small amounts
• He did lots of work in thermodynamics
• He studied the distribution of energy in the electromagnetic spectrum
• In 1926, Planck got elected to the Foreign Membership of the Royal Society -
Andrew Roberts Millikan
• Robert Andrews Millikan lived from 1868 to 1953 in Illinois • He developed the anti-submarine and a meteorological devices in WW1
• He won a noble Peace Prize in 1923 in physics
• He determined the atomic structure of electricity
• He confirmed Joseph John Thompson’s hypothesis of the mass of an electron is 1000 times than the lightest atom
• He measured the electron charge and became famous for doing so
• He was the co-author of many standard classroom manuals -
Ernest Rutherford
• Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand chemist who helped pioneer nuclear physics.
• He lived from the 30th of August 1871 to the 19th of October 1937.
• He won a Nobel Prize in chemistry
• He studied at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand before moving to England in 1895, to then post-graduate study at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge -
Ernest Rutherford
• In 1907, Hans Geiger, Ernest Marsden and Rutherford, carried out the Geiger Marsden experiment to try an attempt to examine the structure of an atom
• The results of the experiments showed that the atomic nucleus exists
• His model of the atom shows the electrons circling around the nucleus -
Ernest Rutherford
• He studied at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand before moving to England in 1895, to then post-graduate study at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge
• He worked on radioactivity, by coining the terms ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ to describe two different types of radiation emitted by uranium and thorium
• He observed that radioactive material took the same amount of time for half of it to decay -
Niels Bohr
• Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen Denmark on October 7, 1885 and died in 1962
• His education was completed in Copenhagen, in which he then entered the University of Copenhagen in 1903
• In 1908, he was the first student to receive an award for an investigation of the surface tension using oscillating fluid jets. It was offered by the Academy of Science in Copenhagen, in which he got first prize -
Niels Bohr
• He completed his masters in Physics in 1909 and his Doctorate in 1911, by doing studies on the electron theory of metals as his thesis
• His insight of the atom was that an electron could orbit the nucleus (but only in discrete orbits, in which it didn’t emit radiation).
• He proposed that an atom was 1/10,000 of the size of the atoms, in which other scientist proposed
• In 1922, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on the atomic structure -
Erwin Schrodinger
• Erwin Schrodinger was born on the 12th of August 1887 and died on the 4th of January 1961
• He was an Austrian physicist
• He developed a number of basic results in the field of quantum theory, in which it formed the basis of wave mechanics
• He formulated the wave equation, (which was time-dependant and stationary (the Schrodinger equation) and found the identity of his development of the formalism and matrix mechanics -
Erwin Schrodinger
• He proposed an original interpretation of the Physical meaning of the wave function and in the following years he repeatedly criticized the conventional Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics
• He made many attempts to try and construct a unified field theory
• He wrote a book called ‘What Is Life,’ in which he showed the problems of genetics, looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view of physics and he also wrote a book about philosophy and theoretical biology -
James Chadwick
• James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England on the 20th of October 1891 and he died on the 24th of July 1974
• He made a fundamental discovery in the doorman of nuclear science as he proved the existence of neurons
• He also predicted that atoms would have a neutron
• He established that an atomic number is determined by the numbers of protons, which is in an atom
• He discovered the fourth subatomic particle (the neuron)
• In 1932, his discovery of the neuron, had made him famous -
Werner Heisnburg
• Werner Heisnburg was born in Wurzburg on the 5th of December 1901 and died on the 1st of February 1976
• He was in WWII and was taken prisoner by American troops
• He created a theory of quantum mechanics
• He discovered the allotropic forms of hydrogen
• He studied the radiation that is produced from an atom
• He was known for his creation of the famous Principle of Uncertainty
• He worked on problems of thermonuclear processes and plasma physics -
Aristotle
• Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Greece and died in 322 BC from complaining of stomach pains
• He lived with his parents until they died when he was only 10 years old• His dad taught him how to be a physicist
• After his parents died, he lived with his guardian, Proxenus
• When he was 17, he went to a school called the Academy, in Athens in which he studied under Plato (who he admired a lot)
• Later after he had studied he taught at the Academy for 20 years -
Aristotle
• He studied many sciences such as logic, philosophy, ethics, biology, politics, physics, psychology and rhetoric
• In 335 BC he opened his own school called Luceum and ran it for 12 years
• He wrote many science books on philosophy and meteorology during this time
• When the Atomic Theory was discovered, he didn’t believe in it, but he believed that all substances were made up of fire, water, earth and air
• So he taught what he believed in he became well-know for his teachings -
Empedocles
• Empedocles was born in Acragas, Sicily in 492BC and died in 432BC
• He was a philosopher, poet, politician and a visionary
• He developed radical new ideas about the four elements in the universe and defined matter as the various ratios of the elements • His father Meto, was a wealthy person, and his grandfather also called Empedocles was renowned for winning a horse race in the Olympia
• He was believed to have travelled to Thourioi soon after it was established about 444BC -
Empedocles
• His keen intellect enabled him to combine talents in natural history, poetry, philosophy, politics and to achieve his day in high standards
• According to a Greek philosopher (Aristotle) said that Empedocles was the inventor of rhetoric, in which he often utilized as a statesman
• He was a popular man among his fellow citizens through his support of democracy -
Empedocles
• He claimed that matter was the only principle of all things
• He stated two forces, in which he called love and hate or eros and strife, controlled how the four elements come together or move apart
• He also studied the nature of change in the universe. He found that the cyclical nature of the universe introduces the possibility of reincarnation, as nothing can be destroyed but only transformed -
Empedocles
• He later wrote a poetic treatise on nature containing the ideas of evolution, the atmospheric pressure and the circulation of blood
• He stated that the Moon shone by the reflection of light and he estimated that the Moon was one-third of the distance from the earth to the sun
• According to Aristotle, he was offered a kingship, but he had refused to be King
• He claimed himself as a deity
• Some people said that he made important contributions to the philosophy of science in his day
