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400 BCE
DEMOCRITUS
He initially brought up the idea of the atom, as an indivisible tiny building block of all matter in the Void, which he reasoned was where all matter lived. He believed atoms to be solid and different only in qualia, while moving randomly in any direction. -
JOHN DALTON
After over 2 millennia of stale work on the atom, John Dalton built upon Democritus’ ideas and postulated many things. He argues, like his predecessor, that all atoms are identical in mass and create everything in the universe, but added that compounds are just a combination of atoms and chemical reactions are rearranging atoms. -
HENRI BECQUEREL
Henri Becquerel, like Marie and Pierre Curie, studied radiation, and particularly the phosphorescence emission from certain strands of Uranium as result of microwaves. He, alongside of the Curies, helped with the analysis of radiation and how such atoms decay and emit radioactive rays. -
MARIE AND PIERRE CURIE
Pierre and Marie Curie were pioneers in the study of radiation and elements that radiate strange energy. They discovered numerous elements and studied the nature of their radioactiveness. -
ERNEST RUTHERFORD
Labeled the father of radioactive molecular dynamic, Rutherford changed the scope for which we look at molecules; he postulated radioactive phenomena through atomic and not molecular models, as well as creating this model with a nucleus, which would have the majority of the positive electrons. -
NIELS BOHR
Niels Bohr was an imperative contributor to the atomic model and quantum theory as a whole. By integrating ideas and concepts from Rutherford and Max Planck, he developed a wholesome model for the atom which to a degree is still used today. -
JAMES CHADWICK
James Chadwick was a lead physicist in proving the existence of the neutron, an elementary particle with null charge. He shot a ton of alpha particles at beryllium, and the unknown radiation that permitted gave way to this logic. This gave the idea of fussing Uranium 235 and as a result the atomic bomb. -
ERWIN SCHRODINGER
Erwin Schrodinger took the ideas Niels Bohr had developed and built it one step beyond with his innovative equation now dubbed the quantum mechanical model of the atom, which could predict where any given electron was at a certain time. He also worked with thermodynamics and the atomic spectra.
