EMPEDOCLES (450 BC)
suggested that all matter was
Empedocles was a Greek philosopher who
is best known for his belief that all matter
was composed of four elements: fire, air,
water, and earth. Some have considered
him the inventor of rhetoric and the founder
of the science of medicine in Italy.
Empedocles discovered air as a separate
substance. In his cosmology fire, air, water
and earth mingle and separate under the
compulsion of love and strife. He wrote a
poetic treatise 'On Nature'. It contained
ideas that anticipated the ideas of evolution,
the circulation of the blood, and atmospheric
pressure.
DEMOCRITUS (400 BC)
* proposed that all matter is made up of very
small particles called atom , which cannot be
divided into a smaller units.
Democritus believed that atoms were
uniform, solid, hard, incompressible, and
indestructible and that they moved in
infinite numbers through empty space
until stopped. Differences in atomic shape
and size determined the various properties
of matter.
ARISTOTLE (380- 320 BC)
proposed that all matter was continuous and
can be further divided infinitely into smaller
pieces.
Aristotle did not believe in the atomic theory
and he taught so otherwise. He thought
that all materials on Earth were not made
of atoms, but of the four elements, Earth,
Fire, Water, and Air. He believed all
substances were made of small amounts of
these four elements of matter.
1799 JOSEPH PROUST
* proposed the law of definite proportions.
He 
composed of tiny indivisible particles,
which he called atoms. Joseph Proust found
that compounds always contain the same
proportion of elements by mass, regardless
of amount. This was later called the law of
definite proportions.
1808 JOHN JOSEPH DALTON
*formulated the atomic theory and proposed
the law of multiple proportions.
Dalton hypothesized that the law of
conservation of mass and the law of definite
proportions could be explained using the
idea of atoms. He proposed that all matter
is made of tiny indivisible particles
called atoms, which he imagined as "solid,
massy, hard, impenetrable, movable
particle(s)".
1869 DMITRI MENDELEEV
* arranged the known elements in a periodic
table based on their atomic mass.
Dmitri Mendeleev devised the periodic
classification of the chemical elements,
in which the elements were arranged in
order of increasing atomic weight.
1890 's ANTOINE BECQUEREL AND
MARIE CURIE
* Observed that radioactivity causes some
atoms to break down spontaneously.
Marie Curie became the first woman to be
awarded the nobel prize and the first person
to obtain two nobel prizes when she won
the prize for the discovery of Polonium and
Radium in 1911. Though it was Henri
Becquerel that discovered radioactivity, it
was Marie Curie who coined the term.
He conducted an experiment on uranium
salts, which he inherited from his
father. He hypothesized that the uranium
would absorb light and reemit it as x-
rays. He put the uranium on photographic
plates. He developed the plates and
observed that the uranium had, in fact,
emitting radiation similar to x-rays.
1895 WILHELM RONTGEN
Wilhelm Röntgen when asked what he was
thinking on November 8, 1895, at the
moment he discovered X-rays. His
investigations and the resulting paper, “On a
New Kind of Rays,” took the world by storm,
revolutionized medicine, and earned him the
first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901
1897-1904 JOHN JOSEPH THOMPSON
*discovered electrons * suggested the plum
pudding of the atom.
In 1897 Thomson discovered the electron
and then went on to propose a model for
the structure of the atom. His work also
led to the invention of the mass
spectrograph.
1908-1917 ROBERT MILLIKAN
* found that the charge of an electron is equal
to - 1.6022 x 10 -19 C.
His earliest major success was
the accurate determination of the charge
carried by an electron, using the elegant
“falling-drop method”; he also proved that
this quantity was a constant for all electrons
(1910), thus demonstrating the atomic
structure of electricity.
1910-1911 ERNEST RUTHERFORD
* Observed that atoms are mostly empty
space.
Ernest Rutherford postulated the nuclear
structure of the atom, discovered alpha
and beta rays, and proposed the laws of
radioactive decay. He received the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry in 1908.
1913 NIELS BOHR
*Proposed an atomic model that shows
electrons move in concentric orbits around the
nucleus.
In 1913, Niels Bohr proposed a theory for
the hydrogen atom, based on quantum
theory that some physical quantities only
take discrete values. Electrons move
around a nucleus, but only in prescribed
orbits, and If electrons jump to a lower-
energy orbit, the difference is sent out as
radiation.
HENRY GWYN
*used X- rays spectra to study atomic
structures.
Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley 23
November 1887 – 10 August 1915) was an
English physicist, whose contribution to the
science of physics was the justification
from physical laws of the previous
empirical and chemical concept of the
atomic number
1919 ERNEST RUTHERFORD
* discovered protons.
In 1919, New Zealander Ernest Rutherford
reported on a series of experiments he had
been conducting in Manchester. Rutherford
found that nitrogen nuclei ejected what he
suspected was "a hydrogen atom" when
bombarded with energetic α (alpha)
particles. Subsequently, he named this
fundamental particle the proton.
1932 JAMES CHADWICK
* discovered the neutrons
In 1932, Chadwick made a fundamental
discovery in the domain of nuclear science:
he proved the existence of neutrons –
elementary particles devoid of any electrical
charge.

A TIMELINE ON THE
BRIEF HISTORY ON
MATTER AND ATOM