History of the Atom Timeline

  • 460 BCE

    Democritus

    Democritus
    born around 460 BC and died around 370 BC. Created the theory that everything is composed of atoms. Atoms are physically but not geometrically, indivisible, that between atoms there lies an empty space and atoms are also indestructible.
  • John Dalton

    John Dalton
    Discovered the atom in 1808 based his theory off of the law of conservation of mass and the law of constant composition.
  • Dimitri Mendeleev

    Dimitri Mendeleev
    Discovered the atom on 17 February 1869, he jotted down the symbols of the chemical elements putting them in order by their atomic weight. Which created the Periodic Table
  • Eugene Goldstein

    Eugene Goldstein
    Discovered anode rays. He concluded that in addition to the electrons or cathode rays, that travel from negatively charged cathodes towards positively charged cathodes.
  • JJ Thompson

    JJ Thompson
    In 1897 discovered the electron which lead to him proposing the model of the structure of an atom.
  • Max Planck

    Max Planck
    German physicist who discovered the quantum of action, now referred as Planck’s constant h. His work laid the foundation for quantum theory
  • Robert Millikan

    Robert Millikan
    Discovered electric charge using the oil drop experiment. He charged droplets of oil in between two electrodes.
  • Ernest Rutherford

    Ernest Rutherford
    1911 he discovered the nuclear structure of the atom. His experiments showed when alpha particles are fired into gas atoms, a few are violently deflected.
  • Niels Bohr

    He proposed a theory for the hydrogen atom, which based on quantum theory that some physical quantities only take discrete values. (Nucleus)
  • Werner Heisenberg

    Werner Heisenberg
    Discovered the uncertainty principle. Which states that a particles position and momentum cannot both be known exactly.
  • Erwin Schrodinger

    Erwin Schrodinger
    Austrian physicist formulated a wave equation that accurately calculated the energy levels of the electrons in atoms.
  • James Chadwick

    James Chadwick
    1932 He proved the existence of neutrons. Neutrons are elementary particles that devoid electronic charges