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.
Contents |
BC
- 17th century BC - Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa: first known Babylonian astronomical observations
- 8th century BC - Aitareya Brahmana: heliocentrism
- 430s BC - Thucydides: immune system
- 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
- Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (a.s): 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
- 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 - Ibn al-Haytham'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
- Theodoric of Freiberg: correct explanation of rainbow phenomenon
14th century
- Before 1327 - William of Ockham: Occam's Razor
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 [1]
- 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 [2]
- 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
- 1675 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek: Microorganisms
- 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
- 1781 - William Herschel announces discovery of Uranus, expanding the known boundaries of the solar system for the first time in modern history
- 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 - Antoine 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
- 1934 - Clive McCay: Calorie Restriction extends the maximum lifespan of another species Calorie_restriction#Research_history
- 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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