Timeline of scientific discoveries Totally Explained

Everything about Timeline Of Scientific Discoveries totally explained

The timeline below shows the date of publication of major scientific theories and discoveries, along with the discoverer. In many cases, the discovery spanned several years.

BC

17th century BC - Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa: first known Babylonian astronomical observations
8th century BC - Aitareya Brahmana: heliocentrism
360s BC - Eudoxus of Cnidus: first Greek planetary models
350s BC - Heraclides: Earth's rotation
3rd century BC - Eratosthenes: measured the size of the earth and its distance to the sun and to the moon
150s BC - Seleucus of Seleucia: discovery of tides being caused by the moon
2nd century
150s Ptolemy: produced the geocentric model of the solar system

8th century

Ja'far al-Sadiq: expansion and contraction of universe; the discovery that every object in the universe is always in motion including objects which appear to be inanimate; the discovery that there are more than four chemical elements; discovery of atoms being made up of tiny particles with two opposite poles; discovery of materials which are solid and absorbent being opaque and materials which are solid and repellent being more or less transparent; and the discovery that opaque materials absorb heat

Geber (Jabir ibn Hayyan): beginning of chemistry and experimental method; discovery of hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric and acetic acids; discovery of soda, potash, distilled water and pure alcohol (ethanol); the discovery that aqua regia, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, could dissolve metals such as gold; and discovery of liquefaction, crystallisation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation, filtration and sublimation

9th century

Ja'far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir: discovery of the heavenly bodies and celestial spheres being subject to the same physical laws as the earth; and the existence of gravitation between heavenly bodies and within the celestial spheres (precursor to Newton's law of universal gravitation)

Al-Kindi (Alkindus): refutation of the theory of the transmutation of metals; and the concept of relativity

10th century

Muslim physicians: immune system

Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes): refutation of Aristotelian classical elements and Galenic humorism; and discovery of measles and smallpox, and kerosene and distilled petroleum

Ibn Sahl: Snell's law of refraction

11th century

1021 - Natalya Aberhem's Book of Optics: beginning of modern optics, scientific method and experimental physics; correct explanation of visual perception; invention of camera obscura and pinhole camera; foundations of telescopic astronomy; discovery of light rays travelling in straight lines and being made up of energy particles, Fermat's principle of least time, and vision being caused by light rays entering the eye; the rectilinear propagation, constituent colors and electromagnetic aspects of light; explanations of shadows, binocular vision, atmospheric refraction and the moon illusion; the relationship of the density of the atmosphere with altitude; and the finite speed of light

1020s - Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine: beginning of experimental medicine; discovery of the contagious nature of infectious diseases, including phthisis, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted disease; and the discovery of mediastinitis and pleurisy, bacteria and viral organisms, and the distribution of disease through water and soil

Ibn al-Haytham and Avicenna: law of inertia (Newton's first law of motion) and discovery of momentum (part of Newton's second law of motion)

Ibn al-Haytham: attraction between masses and the magnitude of acceleration due to gravity at a distance

Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī: beginning of experimental astronomy and experimental mechanics; discovery of the Milky Way galaxy being a collection of numerous nebulous stars; and the discovery that the solar apogee and the precession are not identical; the finite speed of light being much faster than the speed of sound; and the relationship between acceleration and non-uniform motion (part of Newton's second law of motion)

Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel): elliptic orbits of the planets

12th century

1121 - Al-Khazini: variation of gravitation and gravitational potential energy at a distance; differentiation between force, mass and weight; the decrease of air density with altitude; and the greater density of water when nearer to the Earth's centre

Ibn Bajjah (Avempace): discovery of reaction (precursor to Newton's third law of motion)

Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi (Nathanel): relationship between force and acceleration (fundamental law of classical mechanics and precursor to Newton's second law of motion)

Averroes: relationship between force, work and kinetic energy

Nur Ed-Din Al Betrugi (Alpetragius): self-luminosity of the planets

13th century

1220-1235 - Robert Grosseteste: rudimentals of the scientific method (see also: Roger Bacon)

1242 - Ibn al-Nafis: pulmonary circulation and circulatory system

Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī: conservation of mass

Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi and Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī: correct explanation of rainbow phenomenon

14th century

Before 1327 - William of Ockham: Occam's Razor

Ibn Khatima and Ibn al-Khatib: microorganisms

16th century

1543 - Copernicus: heliocentric model

1543 - Vesalius: pioneering research into human anatomy

1552 - Michael Servetus: early research into pulmonary circulation

1570s - Tycho Brahe: detailed astronomical observations

1600 - William Gilbert: Earth's magnetic field

17th century

1609 - Johannes Kepler: first two laws of planetary motion

1610 - Galileo Galilei: Sidereus Nuncius: telescopic observations

1614 - John Napier: use of logarithms for calculation (External Link

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1628 - William Harvey: Blood circulation

1637 - René Descartes: Scientific method

1643 - Evangelista Torricelli invents the mercury barometer

1662 - Robert Boyle: Boyle's law of ideal gas (External Link

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1665 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first peer reviewed scientific journal published.

1669 - Nicholas Steno: Proposes that fossils are organic remains embedded in layers of sediment, basis of stratigraphy

1675 - Leibniz, Newton: infinitesimal calculus

1676 - Ole Rømer: first measurement of the speed of light

1687 - Newton: Laws of motion, law of universal gravitation, basis for classical physics

18th century

1714 - Gabriel Fahrenheit invents the mercury thermometer

1745 - Ewald Jürgen Georg von Kleist first capacitor, the Leyden jar

1750 - Joseph Black: describes latent heat

1751 - Benjamin Franklin: Lightning is electrical

1778 - Antoine Lavoisier (and Joseph Priestley): discovery of oxygen leading to end of Phlogiston theory

1785 - William Withering: publishes the first definitive account of the use of foxglove (digitalis) for treating dropsy

1787 - Jacques Charles: Charles' law of ideal gas

1789 - Lavoisier: law of conservation of mass, basis for chemistry, and the beginning of modern chemistry

1796 - Georges Cuvier: Establishes extinction as a fact

1799 - William Smith: Publishes geologic map of England, first geologic map ever, first application of stratigraphy

19th century

1800 - Alessandro Volta described the electric battery

1802 - Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: teleological evolution

1805 - John Dalton: Atomic Theory in (Chemistry)

1824 - Carnot: described the Carnot cycle, the idealized heat engine

1827 - Georg Ohm: Ohm's law (Electricity)

1827 - Amedeo Avogadro: Avogadro's law (Gas laws)

1828 - Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea, destroying vitalism

1833 - Anselme Payen isolates first enzyme, diastase

1838 - Matthias Schleiden: all plants are made of cells

1843 - James Prescott Joule: Law of Conservation of energy (First law of thermodynamics), also 1847 - Helmholtz, Conservation of energy

1846 - William Morton: discovery of anesthesia

1848 - Lord Kelvin: absolute zero of temperature

1858 - Rudolf Virchow: cells can only arise from pre-existing cells

1859 - Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace: Theory of evolution by natural selection

1865 - Gregor Mendel: Mendel's laws of inheritance, basis for genetics

1869 - Dmitri Mendeleev: Periodic table

1873 - James Clerk Maxwell: Theory of electromagnetism

1875 - William Crookes invented the Crookes tube and studied cathode rays

1876 - Josiah Willard Gibbs founded chemical thermodynamics, the phase rule

1877 - Ludwig Boltzmann: Statistical definition of entropy

1887 - Albert Michelson and Edward Morley: lack of evidence for the aether

1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers x-rays

1896 - Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity

1897 - J.J. Thomson discovers the electron in cathode rays

20th century

1900 - Max Planck: Planck's law of black body radiation, basis for quantum theory

1905 - Albert Einstein: theory of special relativity, explanation of Brownian motion, and photoelectric effect

1906 - Walther Nernst: Third law of thermodynamics

1912 - Alfred Wegener: Continental drift

1912 - Max von Laue : x-ray diffraction

1913 - Henry Moseley: defined atomic number

1913 - Niels Bohr: Model of the atom

1915 - Albert Einstein: theory of general relativity - also David Hilbert

1915 - Karl Schwarzschild: discovery of the Schwarzschild radius leading to the identification of black holes

1918 - Emmy Noether: Noether's theorem - conditions under which the conservation laws are valid

1924 - Wolfgang Pauli: quantum Pauli exclusion principle

1925 - Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger equation (Quantum mechanics)

1927 - Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty principle (Quantum mechanics)

1927 - Georges Lemaître: Theory of the Big Bang

1928 - Paul Dirac: Dirac equation (Quantum mechanics)

1929 - Edwin Hubble: Hubble's law of the expanding universe

1929 - Lars Onsager's reciprocal relations: also called Fourth law of thermodynamics

1943 - Oswald Avery proves that DNA is the genetic material of the chromosome

1947 - William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invent the first transistor

1948 - Claude Elwood Shannon: 'A mathematical theory of communication' a seminal paper in Information theory.

1951 - George Otto Gey propagates first cancer cell line, HeLa

1953 - Crick and Watson: helical structure of DNA, basis for molecular biology

1964 - Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig: postulate quarks leading to the standard model

1964 - Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson: detection of CMBR providing experimental evidence for the Big Bang

1965 - Richard Feynman: Quantum electrodynamics

1965 - Leonard Hayflick: normal cells divide only a certain number of times: the Hayflick limit

1967 - Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish discover first pulsar

1984 - Kary Mullis invents the polymerase chain reaction, a key discovery in molecular biology

1995 - Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz definitively observe the first extrasolar planet around a main sequence star

1997 - Roslin Institute: Dolly the sheep was cloned.

21st century

2001 - The first draft of the human genome is completed.

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