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Chronology of Scientific Developments


Versie 26/7/99

562 AC Thales of Milete, one of the oldest known philosophers of nature, dies.

500 AC Pythagoras dies. Theory of numbers. Theory of the cosmos built out of geometrical elements.

500 AC Empedocles teaches in Agrigento, Great Greece (Sicily). Theory of the four elements.

455 AC Herodotos gives lectures in Athens on his travels.

440 AC Democrit founds a school of philosophers in Abdera. A first clear corpuscular worldpicture.

388 AC Plato founds the Academy in Athens. It will continue to exist until AD 529.

350 AC Hippocrates dies. Founding father of medicine, medical ethics and hygiene.

335 AC Aristotle, former student of Plato, founds the Lyceum in Athens.

300 AC Euclid writes his Elements.

212 AC Archimed dies. Allthough famous for several practical applications (Archimeds Law) he was probably more theoretical inclined.

56 AC Lucret writes his learned poem De natura rerum. He defends a corpuscular worldpicture.

AD 79 Pliny the elder dies. Author of the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia.

AD 162 Galen starts lecturing in Rome. Founder of an extensive system of human (animal) physiology.

AD 178 Ptolemy dies. Mathematician, geographer and astronomist. Influential untill the Scientific Revolution.

AD 250 Diophantes from Alexandria investigates the mathematics of equations with 1 or more unknowns

AD 290 Pappos from Alexandria describes several mechanical instruments. "Theorem of Guldin"; redicovers by P. Guldin (1577 - 1643)

AD 300 First mentioning of Chemistry: "Scientia Chimae", the science of the black land / earth (=Egypt) by Julius Firmicus Maternicus

Fourth Century:
Castorius draws a road map of the Roman Empire
Pelagonius: Ars veterinaria
Theon: Theory of mirrors
Change from scoll to codex (books)
Start of alchemy in Alexandria

AD 379 Manuscript of Dioscorides with 600 coloured plates

AD 401 P. Vegetius with a manuscript about veterinary medicine

AD 406 Activity of the physicians Caelius Aurelianus (Numidia); Theodorus Pricianus (Africa) and Marcellus Empiricus (Gaul)

AD 410 Description of the areometer by bishop Synesios of Cyrene

AD 413 Augustine of Hippo writes his "De civetate dei". Foundation of historiography.

AD 450 Macrobius writes his commentary on Cicero's "Dream of Scipio": the foundation of the medieval geocentric worldpicture.

AD +/- 500 Dionysius "Pseudoareopagita": Neoplatonic philosophy enters Christianity and will have a great influence on the early scholastic philosophy of nature.

AD 519 Boethius in prison under Theodoric the great. Last of the classical philosophers; first of the medieval philosophers.

AD 540 Cassiodorus (ca 485 -ca. 580) writes his "Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum". Which also contains the study of the artes libeales, the origins of natual philosophy

630 Isidorus of Sevilla (560 - 636) writes his De natura rerum about astronomy, cosmology and meteorology.

793 Alcuin, former teacher at the cathedral school of York comes to stay at the court of Charlemagne and reforms the teaching.

810-877 Johannes Scottus or Eriugena: De divisione naturae. Rationality in theology and natural philosophy

812 "Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii" from Charlemagne - one of the sources for agriculture and herbal science in Carolingian times.

822 Hrabanus Maurus becomes abbot in Fulda.

827 Strabo writes the didactical poem "Hortulus

1124 Peter Abelard teacher at the cathedral school of Paris (just before he meets Heloise). Founder of the scholastic method.

1147 Hildegard becomes abbess of Bingen. Writes her Physica.

1266 Roger Bacon writes at the request of Pope Clemens IV his Opus maius.

1280 Albertus Magnus dies. Reintroduces Aristotle to the west.

1279 Thomas the Aquinine dies. Greatest and almost last of the medieval scholastic phiosophers.

1295 Marco Polo returns with his father in Venice.

1307 Theodoric of Freibourg studies the rainbow. Gives a geometrical explanation of its properties.

1309 William od Ockham in Oxford - Ockhams Razor.

1482 Leonardo da Vinci starts his career at the court of Lodovico Sforza in Milan.

1492 Columbus sights the Westindies.

1520 Fernando de Magellan discovers the mouth of the Rio de la Plata

1536 Paracelsus publishes The Great Surgery Book.

1543 Copernicus publishes De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), and dies shortly thereafter.

1543 Vesal publishes his De corporis humani fabrica.

1549 Franciscus Xaverius SJ is the first European to vist Japan.

1556 Georgius Agricola's De re Metallica (On Metals) published posthumously.

1569 Gerardus mercater publishes his Mercator projection world map.

1572 Tycho Brahe observes a supernova in Cassiopeia constellation.

158__ Galileo Galilei discovers that the time of a pendulum swing is independent of the length of the arc.

1585 Simon Stevin publishes his De thiende, in which he lays the foundations of our system of decimal fractions.

1596 Johannes Kepler publishes Mysterium cosmographicum.

1600 Kepler becomes Brahe's assistant in Brahe's observatory near Prague.

1600 William Gilbert publishes his De Magnete. The earth possesses the character of a magnet.

1603 Galileo carries out his experiments with a ball rolling down an inclined plane.

1608 Hans Lippershey sells a refracting telescope to the Dutch government.

1609 Kepler publishes Brahe's calculation of the orbit of Mars, revealing his first and second laws of planetary motion. (Astronomia nova)

Galileo Galilei constructs his telescope.

1610 Galilei discovers Jupiter's 4 largest moons.

1613 Galilei publishes work on sunspots.

1614 Scottish mathematician John Napier publishes the first logarithmic table Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio, and coins the word "logarithm."

1619 Kepler publishes De cometis and Harmonice mundi, in which he announces his third law of planetary motion.

1619 Rene Descartes has 3 dreams, and comes to believe that all knowledge can be revealed by the use of reason and mathematics.

162__ Galilei publishes paper on the scientific method.

1628 English physician William Harvey publishes Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (On the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals).

1632 Galilei publishes Dialogo . . . sopra I due massimi sistemi del mondo, supporting Copernicus' view that the planets circled the sun.

1633 Galilei is prosecuted by the Inquisition in Rome, and abjurs his erroneous views.

1635 Founding of Academie Francaise.

1638 Galilei publishes Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences.

1640 Pascal builds the first calculating machine

1644 Italian Evangelista Torricelli invents the barometer, and publishes De Sphaere.

1646 Pascal publishes his hydrostatical laws.

1651 Harvey publishes on the generation of animals

1655 Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens develops a new method for grinding telescope lenses, making a more powerful telescope, with which he discovers one moon of Saturn and the rings of Saturn, published in 1659 in Systema Saturnium.

1658 Huygens describes his pendulum which swings in exactly equal times and adapts it to the first reliable clock.

1659 AngloIrish physicist and chemist Robert Boyle develops an air pump for creating vacuums, confirms Galilei's view that bodies fall in a vacuum at the same rate, regardless of weight; discovers that sound does not travel in a vacuum.

1660 Malpighi sees the capillaries in the lungs of a frog.

1663 Royal Society of England chartered.

1662 Boyle develops Boyle's Law, that the volume of a gas varies with its pressure.

1665 Englishman Robert Hooke publishes Micropgraphia.

1665 Isaac Newton graduates from Cambridge University.

1666 Isaac Newton develops calculus ("fluxions").

1666 Great Fire of London destroys the library of the College of Physicians.

1669 Robert Hooke observes that the star Gamma Draconis has a parallax of 30 seconds of arc;

1669 German alchemist Hennig Brand discovers phosphorus, the first new element found since ancient times.

1672 Newton sends brief exposition of his theory of colors to the Royal Society in London, which republishes it in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions, leading to criticism of Newton.

1672 Otto von Guericke, Major of Magdeburg publishes his Experimenta nova.

1673 John Mayow discovers that a substance in the air is needed for fire and life. He calls it nitro-aerial particles. 1674 Dutchman Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek discovers onecelled bacteria in marsh water using his microscope.

1675 Leibniz develops differential calculus.

1678 Dutchman Christiaan Huygens discovers the polarization of light.

1679 Robert Hooke writes Newton, suggesting that planets would travel in a straight line but for a constant diversion from this movement around a central point of attraction. Newton did not reply.

1683 Leeuwenhoek sent his report to the Royal Society of London regarding "animalcules" found in water, the human mouth, and the human digestive tract.

1684 Newton is visited by British astronomer and mathematician Edmund Halley. Newton publishes De Motu ("Of Movement").

1687 Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), setting out Newton's three laws of motion.

1688 Newton constructs the first reflecting telescope.

1690 John Locke publishes Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

1703 Newton elected President of the Royal Society.

1704 Newton publishes Optiks.

1716 Stephen Hales carries out his experiments on transport in plants.

1741 Linnaeus becomes professor in Uppsala

1749 Madame du Chatelet, translator and editor of Newton into the french dies.

1767 James Cook is sent out by the Royal Society to the coast of Labrador.

1776 Cook sails the Pacific.

1781 Herschel discovers Uran.

1781 Kant publishes his Kritik der reinen Vernunft. In this book he investigates the possibilitie of knowledge at all.

1799 French troops under Napolean Bonaparte discover Rosetta Stone.

1801 Thomas Young publishes proof of the principle of interference of light, supporting the wave theory of light. Young helps to break the translations of the Rosetta Stone.

1803 Chemist John Dalton puts forth the theory of the atom.

1807 Thomas Young publishes A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts, which introduces the modern concept of energy. Posited the Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision, and described astigmatism.

____ Amadeo conti di Quaregna Avogadro published his hypothesis that equal volumes of gases under identical pressure and temperature contain the same number of molecules. The number is called "Avagadro's number," 6.02252 x 1023.

1822 Jean Champollion presents his translations of the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone to the French Academy.

1825 Michael Faraday discovers benzene.

1828 First synthesis of a organic compound (urea) out of inorganic substances by F. Wöhler (1800 - 1882)

1828 Foundation of modern embryology and the theory of "Keimblätter by K.E. von Baer (1792 - 1876)

1831 Englishman Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.

1833 Recognition of the nucleus as a part of the cell by R. Brown (1773 - 1858)

1833/37 Investigations about the reflex and its location in the spinal chord ("Memoirs on the Nervous System" M. Hall (1790 - 1857)

1834 Faraday promulgates Faraday's Law.

1838 Theory of cells: M.J. Schleiden (1804 - 1881) & T. Schwann (1810 - 1882)

1842 Theory of excretion by the Kidneys: W. Bowman 1816 - 1892)

1842 Concept of conservation of energy in organisms. Respiration is combustion under intake of oxygen: R. Mayer (1814-1878)

1848- Discovery and investigations into the glycogenmetabolism of the liver. Coinage of the concept of "milieu interieur" by Cl. Bernard (1813 - 1878)

1850 First measurement of the speed of a nervous impulse by H. Helmholtz (1821 - 1894)

1852/55 First theory of colour vision by H. Helmholtz

1856 Workmen uncover cave in Neander valley, near Dusseldorf, Germany, containing bones identified as Neanderthal Man. J. C. Fuhlrott (1804 - 1877)

1859 Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species.

1860 Refutation of then abiogenesis by Pasteur (1822 - 1895)

1865 Kekule gives the structural formula of benzene in a lecture for the Academie francaise.

1865 Investigation of the role of chlorophyl in photosyntthesis by J. Sachs (1832 - 1897)

1865 Genetics: G. Mendel (1822 - 1884)

1867 Introduction of antiseptical practice in chirurgy by J. Lister (1827 - 1912)

1868 Railroad workers discover a cave in the cliffs of Les Eyzies in the Vezere valley in the Dordogne, containing five human skeletons identified as CroMagnon Man.

1869 Russian Dmitri Mendeleev publishes the Periodic Table of the Elements.

1869 Discovery of the substance (not the function) of DNA in the nucleus of cells by J. F. Miescher (1844 - 1895)

1870 Development of the microtome by W. His (1831 - 1904)

1872 Charles Darwin publishes The Descent of Man.

1872 The oxydation of foodstuuf takes place in the tissues and not in the blood: E. Pflüger (1829 - 1910)

1872 Gastraea-theory of E. Haeckel (1834 - 1919)

1873 Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell publishes A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, stating his electromagnetic theory.

1873 Coinage of instinct as a congenital pattern of behaviour by D. A. Spalding

1875 Theory of fertilization - Eggs of the Sea-urchin: O. Hertwig (1849 - 1922)

1875/82 Mitosis in plants: E. Strassburger (1844 - 1912)

1876- Discovery of the splenic fever bacillus & several methods of cultivation and staining of bacteria: R. Koch (1843 - 1910)

1878/82 Discovery of the origin of malaria: the unicellular Plasmodium by A. Laveran (1845 - 1922)

1879 Pasteur discovers the way to prepare a vaccin (Chicken-cholera)

1881 Pasteur does his great Anthrax-experiment.

1882 Mitosis in animals W. Fleming (1843 - 1905)

1885 Immune-theory of P. Ehrlich (1854 - 1915)

1885 Heriditary characteristics are in the nucleus: A. von Kölliker (1817 - 1905)

1887 Heinrich Herz discovers radio waves.

1887 A.A. Michelson and E.W. Morley experimentally demonstrate the constancy of the speed of light.

1888 Meiosis by Th. Boveri (1862 - 1915)

+/-1890 Investigations about digestion of I. Pawlow (1849 - 1936)

1891 The dutch governemental physician Dubois discovers Homo erectus.

1894 Michelson says that the future of science would consist of "adding a few decimal places to the results already obtained."

1894 Specificity of enzymes: E. Fischer (1852 - 1919)

1894 Discovery of RNA in cells: O. Hammersten 1841 - 1932

1894 Transplantation of tissue and organs from one species into another (heteroplastic transplantation) by G. Born (1851 - 1900)

1895 Rontgen publishes his finding that Xrays penetrate opaque matter.

? Johann Balmer publishes his discovery of absorption lines of light passing through hydrogen gas.

1896 J.J. Thompson discovers the electron.

1897 Vitamins by C. Eijkman (1858 - 1930)

1900 Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, in a lecture to the German Physical Society, announces that matter absorbs heat energy and emits light energy discontinuously, giving birth to quantum mechanics.

1900 Introduction of Mendels Laws by C. Correns (1864 - 1933), E. von Tschermak (1871 - ) and H. de Vries (1848 - 1935)

1901 Bloodgroups: K. Landsteiner 1868 - 1943)

1903 Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky publishes The Investigation of Outer Space by Means of Reaction Apparatus.

1905 Einstein publishes his paper, ___, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 19__ (?).

1911 Niels Bohr joins J.J. Thomson at Cavendish Laboratory.

1913 First chromosomal map by A.H. Sturtevant (1891 - )

1917 Bacteriophages byF. H. d'Herelle (1873 - 1949)

1918 Observations during solar eclipse confirm General Theory of Relativity.

1919 Rutherford dicovers the artificial desintegration of elements.(BR>
1921 Einstein receives the Nobel Prize in Physics for ___.

1922 Bohr lectures at ___, and meets Werner Heisenberg.

1923 Louis Victor de Broglie publishes doctoral dissertation positing that electrons circle the atom in a standing wave. The momentum of the particle is equal to Planck's constant h, divided by the wavelength L (p = h/L).

Erwin Schroedinger publishes a mathematical equation describing changing wave patterns inside an atom.

Max Born posits that the electron (?) Wave is not the real particle, but rather a probability function of the electron's whereabouts.

1923 The "language" of bees by K. von Frisch (1886 - )

1924 Specific staining method for DNA by R. Feulgen (1884 - 1955)

1925 ___ discovers Australopithecus in ___, Africa.

1926 Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger announced his mathematical formulation of wave mechanics. For Schroedinger's equation, he received the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics.
1926 American Robert H. Goddard ignites first liquid fuel rocket.
1926 Austrian physician Konrad Lorenz starts his work on ethology.

1927 The Fifth Solvay Conference.
Bohr announces the Principle of Complimentarity.

1929 Tsiolkovsky presents design of multistage rocket, and proposed satellites and manned space stations as starting point for space travel.

1931 Einstein leaves Berlin and immigrates to the USA.

10-15 1935 Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen publish their article, "Can Quantummechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?" in The Physical Review.

1937 Scientists bombard the element molybdenum (42 protons) with atomic particles in a cyclatron, adding a proton and creating the first artificial element, technetium (43 protons).

1938 Italian Enrico Fermi receives the Nobel Price in Physics, but leaves Stockholm with his Jewish wife and emigrates to the USA; Germans discover nuclear fission.

08-02 1939 Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Albert Einstein compose letter to U.S.A. President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising him of the prospect of creating a nuclear chain reaction using uranium, for the purpose of generating energy and also creating a bomb large enough to destroy a city. Einstein encouraged President Roosevelt to appoint a liaison between research physicists and government departments, to increase funding for research, and to secure a supply of uranium ore for the U.S.A.

10-11 1939 Einstein's letter delivered by Alexander Sacks to President Roosevelt.

19__ Bohr escapes from German imprisonment to the British, and is flow to USA

194_ Norwegian government minister Dautry sends Norway's store of heavy water to France. Frederic JoliotCurie sends them to England by submarine.

1941 Using atomic bombardment, scientists create plutonium (94 protons).

12-__ 1942 Italian scientist Enrico Fermi, working on a secret US government project, creates first self-sustaining nuclear reaction, in a squash court at Chicago University, Illinois USA. He produces producing enough power to run a flashlight.

7-16 1945 Plutonium atomic bomb exploded at Trinity Site in New Mexico desert.

1953 J.D. Watson & F.H.C. Crick clarify the structure of DNA

10-04 1957 USSR launches Sputnik I, man's first artificial satellite.

01-31 1958 USA launches Explorer I, its first satellite. Discovers Van Allen radiation belts circling Earth.

09__ 1959 USSR's Luna 2 made hard lunar landing.

11__ 1959 USSR's Luna 3 took pictures of dark side of Moon.

04-08 1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is first man to orbit Earth.

02__ 1962 American astronaut John Glenn orbits Earth.

__1962 USA's Mariner 2 passes within 21,500 mi. of Venus.

1963 Laser invented.

03__1965 Soviet cosmonaut ___ becomes first man to "walk" in space.

02__1966 USSR's Luna 9 made first softlanding on Moon.

06__1966 USA's Surveyor 1 made soft lunar landing.

___1967 USA's Mariner 4 takes first closeup photos of Mars.

___1967 USA's Mariner 5 passes within 6,000 mi. of Venus.

07 20 1969 American astronaut Neil A. Armstrong first man to walk on Moon. Accompanied by Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.

__ USA launches Skylab.

113074 American Donald Johanson discovers nearly complete skeleton of a hominid he calls Lucy.

Last Updated: 26/799
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