Democritus

(460 BC- 370 BC)

Through his many travels he picked extensive knowledge and was also said to be educated by Chaldean magi.

Democritus said that all matter was made up of small particles, which he named "atomos", and could not be broken down. These atoms were infinite, always moving, and could bind with each other.

Aristotle

                                      

384 BC- 322 BC

He was educated at Plato's academy.

Aristotle believed that all matter was created from air, water, fire, and earth. He also thought that matter could always be cut into smaller pieces.

John Dalton

September 6, 1766-  July 27, 1844


He was educated at a Quaker school.

Dalton re-introduced the idea of atoms. He added that each element was created from different types of atoms with unique masses and properties. He also proposed that compounds were formed with two or more different kinds of atoms.

Antoine Lavoisier

 August 26,1743- May 8, 1794

Lavoisier earned his law degree from College Mazarin but turned away from law to study math and science under prominent scientists of the time. His work in geology allowed him to later be accepted into the Academy of Sciences.

Lavoisier practiced excellent experimental skills which aided him in the discovery of the Law of the Conservation of Mass. He also named oxygen and hydrogen. Lavoisier went on to create a list of elements and develop the system on chemical nomenclature still used today. He is known as the "father of modern chemistry".

Fun fact: He was beheaded during the French Revolution.

William Crookes

June 17, 1832- April 4, 1919

Crookes was educated at the Royal College of Chemistry.

He discovered the element Thallium. Crookes also developed cathode-ray tubes and found that they are negatively charged.

JJ Thomson

December 18, 1856- August 30, 1940

Thompson was educated at Owens College, Manchester and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Thompson discovered the electron using cathode ray tube.
He proposed the Plum pudding Model.
He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906

Thomson's Plum Pudding Model

Robert Millikan

March 22 1868- December 19, 1953

Millikan was educated at Columbia University and Oberlin College and received both his mastership in physics and his Ph.D. 

Using an oil-drop experiment, he calculated the charge of an electron, which allowed for the calculation of the mass of the electron.

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923. 

William Roentgen

March 27, 1845- February 10, 1923

He was educated at the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich, and the Institute of Martinus Herman van Doorn.

Roentgen discovered the x-ray using cathode-ray tubes. 

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. 

Henri Becquerel

 

December 15, 1852- August 25, 1908

He was educated in France at the Polytechnic and then the government department of Ponts-et-Chaussees and acquired his Doctor of Science degree.

 

Becquerel discovered natural radioactivity while studying the relationship between x-rays and naturally occurring phosphorescence.

 

He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.

 

Fun Fact: He shared the Nobel Prize with Marie and Pierre Curie.

Marie and Pierre Curie

Marie Curie

November 7, 1867- July 4, 1934

She was educated at the University of Paris where she received her Liceciateship in Physics and Mathematical Studies, and later her Doctor of Science.

She shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband and later received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.

Pierre Curie

May 15, 1859- April 19, 1906

Pierre was educated at the Faculty of Sciences at Sorbonne and received his Liceciateship in Physics and his Doctor of Science degree.



Both inspired by Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity, they isolated and discovered polonium and radium and continued to study the properties of radioactive substances.

Ernest Rutherford

August 31, 1871- October 19, 1937 

Rutherford attended the University of New Zealand for his double first in Math and Physical Sciences and his B.Sc. degree. He then moved on to Trinity College as a research student under JJ Thomson for his B.A. research degree.

Rutherford performed his famous gold foil experiment and found that most of the mass of an atom was found in the small positive nucleus and the rest was mostly empty space.

He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908

Rutherford's model of the atom

Henry Moseley

November 23, 1887- August 10, 1915 

Moseley studied mathematics at Eton College and then at Trinity College of the University of Oxford.

Researching x-ray emissions of elements, he rearranged the periodic table by atomic number rather than atomic mass.


Fun Fact: Many speculate that Moseley would have won the Nobel Prize in 1916 if he hadn't been killed during WWI.

James Chadwick

October 20, 1891- July 24, 1974

James Chadwick earned his M.Sc. at Manchester University and then went on to Columbia where he did research under Ernest Rutherford.

Chadwick discovered the neutron.

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935.

Niels Bohr

October 7, 1885- November18, 1962

Niels Bohr was educated at Copenhagen University and earned his Master's degree in Physics and later his Doctor's degree.

Bohr proposed that electrons traveled around the nucleus in stationary orbits.

Bohr won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

Louis-Victor de Broglie

August 15, 1892- March 19, 1987

He attended the University of Paris and earned his Doctorate degree.

Louis-Victor de Broglie suggested that electrons acted like light and behaved both as a wave and a particle. This explains that electrons can only move in certain orbits or energy levels that satisfy both their wave and particle properties.

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1929.

Erwin Schrodinger

August 12, 1887- January 4, 1961

Schrodinger was educated at the University of Vienna.

He used mathematical equations to model the atom as a nucleus surrounded by an electron cloud.

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933.

Werner Heisenberg

December 5, 1901- February 1, 1976

Heisenberg attended the University of Munich and received his Ph.D. in Physics.

He stated that it is impossible to determine the position and momentum of a particle because the methods used to observe the particle (short wave radiation bounced off the particle) affect its behavior. In doing so he established a central principle of quantum mechanics.

His work earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932.

Albert Einstein

March 14, 1879- April 18, 1955

Albert Einstein was educated at the Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich and studied Physics and Mathematics. He later received honorary doctorates from many Universities.

Before Einstein, atoms had never been observed. Einstein proved the existence of atoms by researching and writing a paper on the Brownian movement. Brownian movement shows that a particle suspended in a gas or liquid will "dance" due to repeated collisions with atoms. Einstein even calculated a mathematical expression to represent the particle's motion.

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

April 22, 1904- February 18, 1967

Oppenheimer attended Harvard, Cambridge University, and Gottigen University.

He was named the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the secret project to develop the atomic bomb. He calculated the critical mass of uranium-235, the amount needed to cause a chain reaction. Oppenheimer was also responsible for gathering the other leading scientists and overseeing the construction of the laboratory. For this he is often referred to as the "father" of the atomic bomb.

Makoto Kobayashi

b. April 7, 1944

Kobayashi received his doctorate degree in physics from Nagoya University.

He predicted the existence of three families of quarks, the components of protons and neutrons, with his discovery of the origin of broken symmetry.

Makoto Kobayashi won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2008.

Sources

http://www.rsc.org/chemsoc/timeline/pages/1911.html
http://www.famousscientists.org/henry-moseley/
http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/history/debroglie.html         http://www.abcte.org/files/previews/chemistry/s1_p6.html
http://www.pbs.org/hollywoodpresents/copenhagen/story/heisenberg.html
http://www.nobelprize.org
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Democritus.html
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec05.html
http://cstl-csm.semo.edu/mcgowan/ch181/atomhist.html
http://www.iun.edu/~cpanhd/C101webnotes/composition/dalton.html
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Lavoisier.html
http://www.ias.edu/people/oppenheimer
http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2012/03/20/albert-einstein-and-the-most-elemental-atomic-theory/