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Isaac Newton
English physicist and mathematician. Discovered infinitesimal calculus. Discovered white light, which integrated colors into the science of life and laid the foundation for today's physcial optics. Three Laws of Motion, led to the formulation of the Law of Universal Gravitation. -
Antoine Lavoisier
French chemist. Major contributer in the 18th century chemical revolution. Investigated Law of Conservation of Mass. Coauthored the modern system for naming chemical substances. Developed experimentally based theory of chemicla reactivity fo Oxygen. Executed during French Revolution. -
John Dalton
British scientist. Said like atoms repel each other and unlike atoms react indifferently in gas mixtures. Explained why each gas in a mixture behaved differently. Atoms of different elements vary in size and mass. Law of Multiple Proportions. -
Sir William Crookes
British chemist and physicist. Known for cathode-ray studies and discovery of Thallium. Developed better vacuum pump for cathode-ray tubes. Called the dark space around the cathode the Crookes dark space. Calculated atomic weight of Thallium 1873. -
Eugen Goldstein
German physicist. Worked with cathode rays. Discovered cathode rays 1886. Said rays cast shadows, emitted perpendicular to the cathode surface 1876, led to the design of concave cathodes. -
JJ Thomson
British physicist. Discovered electron. Plum-pudding model. Used cathode-ray tubes in experiment. Nobel Prize in Physics 1906. Influenced Rutherford. -
Marie Curie
French scientist. Pursued Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity. Discovered uranium samples have more radioactivity than pure uranium; the ore itself has additional radioactivity. Discovered Polonium and Radium. Nobel Prize in Physics with Becquerel 1903. Nobel Prize again for discovery of Polonium and Radium 1911. -
R.A. Millikan
American physicist. Measured course of water droplets in an electrical field. Did a series of experiments to determine electric charge carried by a single electron 1909. Oil-drop experiment 1910. -
Ernest Rutherford
Skilled experimentalist from New Zealand. Discovered alpha and beta rays. Laws of radioactive decay. Said alpha particles were the nuclei of Helium. Famous for gold-foil experiment. -
Lise Meitner
First to recognize that the uranium atom split when bombarded by neutrons. Worked with Hahn. X-ray Nurse in the Austrian army during WW1. Second woman to receive a doctorate form the University of Vienna. Researched identifying products of neutron bombardment of uranium and decay patterns. -
Otto Hahn
One of the first to recognize uranium atoms split when bombarded by neutrons. Isolated radioactive thorium. Worked with Rutherford and Meitner. Researched identifying products of neutron bombardment of uranium and decay patterns. German gas warfare service in WW1. -
Albert Einstein
German-born physicist, immigrated to the U.S. Developed theories of relativity. Only one to realize the contradiction between Newton's Lawss of Motion and Maxwell's Theory of Light. Published four papers in "Annalen der Physik" 1905. Nobel Prize in Physics 1921. -
Hans Geiger
German physicist. Introduced detector of individual alpha particles. Used detector in experiments, led to the identification of alpha particles as the nuclei of Helium atoms. -
Niels Bohr
Nuclear physicist from Denmark. Proposed a theory about Helium atoms based on quantum physics. Said energy was transferred only in certain well-defined quantities 1913. Electrons should move around nucleus in a prescribed orbit. His theory explained why atoms emitted light in fixed wavelengths. When electrons jump form one orbit to a lower energy orbit, a light quantum is emitted. -
James Chadwick
British physicist. Discovered neutron 1932. Nobel Prize in Physics 1935. Worked with Rutherford on the transmutation of elements. Investigated the nature of the atomic nucleus. Identified the proton as a constituent of the nuclei fo other atoms.
