6.0 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timeline of scientific discoveries | 6/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discoveries | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T03:28:31.534973+00:00 | kb-cron |
== 1850–1899 == 1856: Robert Forester Mushet develops a process for the decarbonisation, and re-carbonisation of iron, through the addition of a calculated quantity of spiegeleisen, to produce cheap, consistently high quality steel. 1858: Rudolf Virchow: cells can only arise from pre-existing cells. 1859: Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace: Theory of evolution by natural selection. 1861: Louis Pasteur: Germ theory. 1861: John Tyndall: Experiments in Radiant Energy that reinforced the Greenhouse effect. 1864: James Clerk Maxwell: Theory of electromagnetism. 1865: Gregor Mendel: Mendel's laws of inheritance, basis for genetics. 1865: Rudolf Clausius: Definition of entropy. 1868: Robert Forester Mushet discovers that alloying steel with tungsten produces a harder, more durable alloy. 1869: Dmitri Mendeleev: Periodic table. 1871: Lord Rayleigh: Diffuse sky radiation (Rayleigh scattering) explains why sky appears blue. 1873: Johannes Diderik van der Waals: was one of the first to postulate an intermolecular force: the van der Waals force. 1873: Frederick Guthrie discovers thermionic emission. 1873: Willoughby Smith discovers photoconductivity. 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. 1880s: John Hopkinson develops three-phase electrical supplies, mathematically proves how multiple AC dynamos can be connected in parallel, improves permanent magnets, and dynamo efficiency, by the addition of tungsten, and describes how temperature effects magnetism (Hopkinson effect). 1880: Pierre Curie and Jacques Curie: Piezoelectricity. 1884: Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff: discovered the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions (in his work "Études de dynamique chimique"). 1887: Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley: Michelson–Morley experiment which showed a lack of evidence for the aether. 1888: Friedrich Reinitzer discovers liquid crystals. 1892: Dmitri Ivanovsky discovers viruses. 1895: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers x-rays. 1896: Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity 1896: Svante Arrhenius derives the basic principles of the greenhouse effect 1897: J.J. Thomson discovers the electron in cathode rays 1898: Martinus Beijerinck: concluded that a virus is infectious—replicating in the host—and thus not a mere toxin, and gave it the name "virus" 1898: J.J. Thomson proposed the plum pudding model of an atom 1898: Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium 1898: J. J. O'Donnell discovers and documents the order-of-sequence for the sound of an approaching tornado
== 1900–1949 == 1900: Max Planck: explains the emission spectrum of a black body 1905: Albert Einstein: theory of special relativity, explanation of Brownian motion, and photoelectric effect 1906: Walther Nernst: Third law of thermodynamics 1907: Alfred Bertheim: Arsphenamine, the first modern chemotherapeutic agent 1909: Fritz Haber: Haber Process for industrial production of ammonia 1909: Robert Andrews Millikan: conducts the oil drop experiment and determines the charge on an electron 1910: Williamina Fleming: the first white dwarf, 40 Eridani B 1911: Ernest Rutherford: Atomic nucleus 1911: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes: Superconductivity 1912: Alfred Wegener: Continental drift 1912: Max von Laue: x-ray diffraction 1912: Vesto Slipher: galactic redshifts 1912: Henrietta Swan Leavitt: Cepheid variable period-luminosity relation 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 1920: Arthur Eddington: Stellar nucleosynthesis 1922: Frederick Banting, Charles Best, James Collip, John Macleod: isolation and production of insulin to control diabetes 1924: Wolfgang Pauli: quantum Pauli exclusion principle 1924: Edwin Hubble: the discovery that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies 1925: Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger equation (quantum mechanics) 1925: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: Discovery of the composition of the Sun and that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe 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: Alexander Fleming: Penicillin, the first beta-lactam antibiotic 1929: Lars Onsager's reciprocal relations, a potential fourth law of thermodynamics 1930: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar discovers his eponymous limit of the maximum mass of a white dwarf star 1931: Kurt Gödel: incompleteness theorems prove formal axiomatic systems are incomplete 1932: James Chadwick: Discovery of the neutron 1932: Karl Guthe Jansky discovers the first astronomical radio source, Sagittarius A 1932: Ernest Walton and John Cockcroft: Nuclear fission by proton bombardment 1934: Enrico Fermi: Nuclear fission by neutron irradiation 1934: Clive McCay: Calorie restriction extends the maximum lifespan of another species 1938: Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann: Nuclear fission of heavy nuclei 1938: Isidor Rabi: Nuclear magnetic resonance 1943: Oswald Avery proves that DNA is the genetic material of the chromosome 1945: Howard Florey Mass production of penicillin 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. 1948: Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Freeman Dyson: Quantum electrodynamics