| Part of a series on |
| Chemistry |
|---|
 |
This timeline ofchemistry lists important works, discoveries, ideas, inventions, and experiments that significantly changed humanity's understanding of the modern science known as chemistry, defined as the scientific study of the composition of matter and of its interactions.
Known as "the central science", the study of chemistry is strongly influenced by, and exerts a strong influence on, many other scientific and technological fields. Many historical developments that are considered to have had a significant impact upon our modern understanding of chemistry are also considered to have been key discoveries in such fields as physics, biology, astronomy, geology, and materials science.[1]
Prior to the acceptance of thescientific method and its application to the field of chemistry, it is somewhat controversial to consider many of the people listed below as "chemists" in the modern sense of the word. However, the ideas of certain great thinkers, either for their prescience, or for their wide and long-term acceptance, bear listing here.
Empedocles asserts that all things are composed of four primal roots (later to be renamedstoicheia orelements): earth, air, fire, and water, whereby two active and opposing cosmicforces, love and strife, act upon these elements, combining and separating them into infinitely varied forms.[2]
Leucippus andDemocritus propose the idea of the atom, an indivisible particle that all matter is made of. This idea is largely rejected by natural philosophers in favor of the Aristotelian view (see below).[3][4]
Plato coins term ‘elements’ (stoicheia) and in his dialogueTimaeus, which includes a discussion of the composition of inorganic and organic bodies and is a rudimentary treatise on chemistry, assumes that the minute particle of each element had a special geometric shape:tetrahedron (fire),octahedron (air),icosahedron (water), andcube (earth).[5]
Aristotle, expanding on Empedocles, proposes idea of a substance as a combination ofmatter andform. Describes theory of theFive Elements, fire, water, earth, air, and aether. This theory is largely accepted throughout the western world for over 1000 years.[6]
Lucretius publishesDe Rerum Natura, a poetic description of the ideas ofatomism.[7]
Zosimos of Panopolis writes some of the oldest known books onalchemy, which he defines as the study of the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies.[8]
The Secret of Creation (Arabic:Sirr al-khalīqa), an anonymous encyclopedic work on natural philosophy falsely attributed toApollonius of Tyana, records the earliest known version of the long-held theory that all metals are composed of various proportions ofsulfur andmercury.[9] This same work also contains the earliest known version of theEmerald Tablet,[10] a compact and crypticHermetic text which was still commented upon byIsaac Newton.[11]
Arabic works attributed toJābir ibn Ḥayyān (Latin: Geber) introduce a systematic classification of chemical substances, and provide instructions for deriving an inorganic compound (sal ammoniac orammonium chloride) from organic substances (such as plants, blood, and hair) by chemical means.[12]
Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (Latin: Rhazes), aPersian alchemist, conducts experiments with the distillation of sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride),vitriols (hydratedsulfates of various metals), and othersalts,[13] representing the first step in a long process that would eventually lead to the thirteenth-century discovery of themineral acids.[14]
Abū al-Rayhān al-Bīrūnī[15] andAvicenna,[16] both Persian philosophers, deny the possibility of thetransmutation of metals.
Recipes for the production ofaqua ardens ("burning water", i.e.,ethanol) by distilling wine withcommon salt start to appear in a number of Latin alchemical works.[17]
Robert Grosseteste publishes several Aristotelian commentaries where he lays out an early framework for thescientific method.[18]
The works ofTaddeo Alderotti (1223–1296) describe a method for concentratingethanol involving repeatedfractional distillation through a water-cooled still, by which an ethanol purity of 90% could be obtained.[19]
StAlbertus Magnus discoversarsenic[20][better source needed] andsilver nitrate.[21][better source needed] He also made one of the first references tosulfuric acid.[22]
Roger Bacon publishesOpus Maius, which among other things, proposes an early form of the scientific method, and contains results of his experiments withgunpowder.[23]
Pseudo-Geber, an anonymous alchemist who wrote under the name of Geber (i.e., Jābir ibn Hayyān, see above), publishes theSumma perfectionis magisterii. This work contains experimental demonstrations of thecorpuscular nature of matter that would still be used by seventeenth-century chemists such asDaniel Sennert.[24] Pseudo-Geber is one of the first alchemists to describemineral acids such asaqua fortis or 'strong water' (nitric acid, capable of dissolving silver) andaqua regia or 'royal water' (a mixture of nitric acid andhydrochloric acid, capable of dissolving gold andplatinum).[25]
Paracelsus develops the study ofiatrochemistry, a subdiscipline of alchemy dedicated to extending life, thus being the roots of the modernpharmaceutical industry. It is also claimed that he is the first to use the word "chemistry".[8]
Andreas Libavius publishesAlchemia, a prototypechemistry textbook.[26]
Sir Francis Bacon publishesThe Proficience and Advancement of Learning, which contains a description of what would later be known as thescientific method.[27]
Michal Sedziwój publishes the alchemical treatiseA New Light of Alchemy which proposed the existence of the "food of life" within air, much later recognized asoxygen.[28]
Jean Beguin publishes theTyrocinium Chymicum, an early chemistry textbook, and in it draws the first-everchemical equation.[29]
René Descartes publishesDiscours de la méthode, which contains an outline of the scientific method.[30]
Posthumous publication of the bookOrtus medicinae byJan Baptist van Helmont, which is cited by some as a major transitional work between alchemy and chemistry, and as an important influence onRobert Boyle. The book contains the results of numerous experiments and establishes an early version of thelaw of conservation of mass.[31]
Robert Boyle publishesThe Sceptical Chymist, a treatise on the distinction between chemistry andalchemy. It contains some of the earliest modern ideas ofatoms,molecules, andchemical reaction, and marks the beginning of the history of modern chemistry.[32]
Robert Boyle proposesBoyle's law, an experimentally based description of the behavior ofgases, specifically the relationship betweenpressure andvolume.[32]
Swedish chemistGeorg Brandt analyzes a dark blue pigment found in copper ore. Brandt demonstrated that the pigment contained a new element, later namedcobalt.[33][34]
Joseph Black isolatescarbon dioxide, which he called "fixed air".[35]
Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt, while investigating arsenic compounds, createsCadet's fuming liquid, later discovered to becacodyl oxide, considered to be the first syntheticorganometallic compound.[36]
Joseph Black formulates the concept oflatent heat to explain thethermochemistry ofphase changes.[37]
Henry Cavendish discovershydrogen as a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air.[38]
Carl Wilhelm Scheele andJoseph Priestley independently isolate oxygen, called by Priestley "dephlogisticated air" and Scheele "fire air".[39][40]
.jpg)
Antoine Lavoisier, considered "The father of modern chemistry",[41] recognizes and names oxygen, and recognizes its importance and role in combustion.[42]
Antoine Lavoisier publishesMéthode de nomenclature chimique, the first modern system of chemical nomenclature.[42]
Jacques Charles proposesCharles's law, a corollary of Boyle's law, describes relationship betweentemperature and volume of a gas.[43]
Antoine Lavoisier publishesTraité Élémentaire de Chimie, the first modern chemistry textbook. It is a complete survey of (at that time) modern chemistry, including the first concise definition of thelaw of conservation of mass, and thus also represents the founding of the discipline ofstoichiometry or quantitative chemical analysis.[42][44]
Joseph Proust proposes thelaw of definite proportions, which states that elements always combine in small, whole number ratios to form compounds.[45]
Alessandro Volta devises the firstchemical battery, thereby founding the discipline ofelectrochemistry.[46]
John Dalton proposesDalton's law, which describes relationship between the components in a mixture of gases and the relative pressure each contributes to that of the overall mixture.[47]
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac discovers that water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen by volume.[48]
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac collects and discovers several chemical and physical properties of air and of other gases, including experimental proofs ofBoyle's andCharles's laws, and of relationships between density and composition of gases.[49]
John Dalton publishesNew System of Chemical Philosophy, which contains first modern scientific description of theatomic theory, and clear description of thelaw of multiple proportions.[47]
Jöns Jakob Berzelius publishesLärbok i Kemien in which he proposes modernchemical symbols and notation, and of the concept of relativeatomic weight.[50]
Amedeo Avogadro proposesAvogadro's law, that equal volumes of gases under constant temperature and pressure contain equal number of molecules.[51]
Friedrich Wöhler andJustus von Liebig perform the first confirmed discovery and explanation ofisomers, earlier named by Berzelius. Working with cyanic acid and fulminic acid, they correctly deduce that isomerism was caused by differing arrangements of atoms within a molecular structure.[52]
William Prout classifies biomolecules into their modern groupings:carbohydrates,proteins andlipids.[53]
Friedrich Wöhler synthesizesurea, thereby establishing that organic compounds could be produced from inorganic starting materials, disproving the theory ofvitalism.[52]
Friedrich Wöhler and Justus von Liebig discover and explainfunctional groups andradicals in relation to organic chemistry.[52]
Germain Hess proposesHess's law, an early statement of thelaw of conservation of energy, which establishes that energy changes in a chemical process depend only on the states of the starting and product materials and not on the specific pathway taken between the two states.[54]
Hermann Kolbe obtainsacetic acid from completely inorganic sources, further disproving vitalism.[55]
Lord Kelvin establishes concept ofabsolute zero, the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases.[56]
Louis Pasteur discovers that theracemic form oftartaric acid is a mixture of the levorotatory and dextrotatory forms, thus clarifying the nature ofoptical rotation and advancing the field ofstereochemistry.[57]
August Beer proposesBeer's law, which explains the relationship between the composition of a mixture and the amount of light it will absorb. Based partly on earlier work byPierre Bouguer andJohann Heinrich Lambert, it establishes theanalytical technique known asspectrophotometry.[58]
Benjamin Silliman, Jr. pioneers methods ofpetroleum cracking, which makes the entire modernpetrochemical industry possible.[59]
William Henry Perkin synthesizesPerkin's mauve, the first synthetic dye. Created as an accidental byproduct of an attempt to createquinine fromcoal tar. This discovery is the foundation of the dye synthesis industry, one of the earliest successful chemical industries.[60]
Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz proposes thatcarbon is tetravalent, or forms exactly fourchemical bonds.[61]
Gustav Kirchhoff andRobert Bunsen lay the foundations ofspectroscopy as a means of chemical analysis, which lead them to the discovery ofcaesium andrubidium. Other workers soon used the same technique to discoverindium,thallium, andhelium.[62]
Stanislao Cannizzaro, resurrecting Avogadro's ideas regarding diatomic molecules, compiles a table ofatomic weights and presents it at the 1860Karlsruhe Congress, ending decades of conflicting atomic weights and molecular formulas, and leading to Mendeleev's discovery of the periodic law.[63]
Alexander Parkes exhibitsParkesine, one of the earliestsynthetic polymers, at the International Exhibition in London. This discovery formed the foundation of the modernplastics industry.[64]
Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois publishes the telluric helix, an early, three-dimensional version of theperiodic table of the elements.[65]
John Newlands proposes the law of octaves, a precursor to theperiodic law.[65]
Lothar Meyer develops an early version of the periodic table, with 28 elements organized byvalence.[66]
Cato Maximilian Guldberg andPeter Waage, building onClaude Louis Berthollet's ideas, proposed thelaw of mass action.[67][68][69]
Johann Josef Loschmidt determines exact number of molecules in amole, later namedAvogadro constant.[70]
Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, based partially on the work of Loschmidt and others, establishes structure of benzene as a six carbon ring with alternatingsingle anddouble bonds.[61]
Adolf von Baeyer begins work onindigo dye, a milestone in modern industrial organic chemistry which revolutionizes the dye industry.[71]
Dmitri Mendeleev publishes the first modern periodic table, with the 66 known elements organized by atomic weights. The strength of his table was its ability to accurately predict the properties of as-yet unknown elements.[65][66]
Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff andJoseph Achille Le Bel, working independently, develop a model ofchemical bonding that explains the chirality experiments of Pasteur and provides a physical cause foroptical activity in chiral compounds.[72]
Josiah Willard Gibbs publishesOn the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, a compilation of his work on thermodynamics andphysical chemistry which lays out the concept offree energy to explain the physical basis of chemical equilibria.[73]
Ludwig Boltzmann establishes statistical derivations of many important physical and chemical concepts, includingentropy, and distributions of molecular velocities in the gas phase.[74]
Svante Arrhenius developsion theory to explain conductivity inelectrolytes.[75]
Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff publishesÉtudes de Dynamique chimique, a seminal study onchemical kinetics.[76]
Hermann Emil Fischer proposes structure ofpurine, a key structure in many biomolecules, which he later synthesized in 1898. Also begins work on the chemistry ofglucose and relatedsugars.[77]
Henry Louis Le Chatelier developsLe Chatelier's principle, which explains the response of dynamicchemical equilibria to external stresses.[78]
Eugen Goldstein names thecathode ray, later discovered to be composed of electrons, and thecanal ray, later discovered to be positive hydrogen ions that had been stripped of their electrons in acathode ray tube. These would later be namedprotons.[79]
Alfred Werner discovers the octahedral structure of cobalt complexes, thus establishing the field ofcoordination chemistry.[80]
William Ramsay discovers thenoble gases, which fill a large and unexpected gap in the periodic table and led to models of chemical bonding.[81]
J. J. Thomson discovers theelectron using thecathode ray tube.[82]
Wilhelm Wien demonstrates that canal rays (streams of positive ions) can be deflected by magnetic fields, and that the amount of deflection is proportional to themass-to-charge ratio. This discovery would lead to theanalytical technique known asmass spectrometry.[83]
Maria Sklodowska-Curie andPierre Curie isolateradium andpolonium frompitchblende.[84]
Ernest Rutherford discovers the source ofradioactivity as decaying atoms; coins terms for various types of radiation.[85]
Mikhail Semyonovich Tsvet inventschromatography, an important analytic technique.[86]
Hantaro Nagaoka proposes an earlynuclear model of the atom, where electrons orbit a dense massive nucleus.[87]
Fritz Haber andCarl Bosch develop theHaber process for makingammonia from its elements, a milestone in industrial chemistry with deep consequences in agriculture.[88]
Albert Einstein explainsBrownian motion in a way that definitively proves atomic theory.[89]
Leo Hendrik Baekeland inventsbakelite, one of the first commercially successful plastics.[90]
Robert Millikan measures the charge of individual electrons with unprecedented accuracy through theoil drop experiment, confirming that all electrons have the same charge and mass.[91]
S. P. L. Sørensen invents thepH concept and develops methods for measuring acidity.[92]
Antonius van den Broek proposes the idea that the elements on the periodic table are more properly organized by positive nuclear charge rather than atomic weight.[93]
The firstSolvay Conference is held inBrussels, bringing together most of the most prominent scientists of the day. Conferences in physics and chemistry continue to be held periodically to this day.[94]
Ernest Rutherford,Hans Geiger, andErnest Marsden perform thegold foil experiment, which proves the nuclear model of the atom, with a small, dense, positive nucleus surrounded by a diffuseelectron cloud.[85]
William Henry Bragg andWilliam Lawrence Bragg proposeBragg's law and establish the field ofX-ray crystallography, an important tool for elucidating the crystal structure of substances.[95]
Peter Debye develops the concept ofmolecular dipole to describe asymmetric charge distribution in some molecules.[96]
Niels Bohr introduces concepts ofquantum mechanics to atomic structure by proposing what is now known as theBohr model of the atom, where electrons exist only in strictly definedorbitals.[97]
Henry Moseley, working from Van den Broek's earlier idea, introduces concept ofatomic number to fix inadequacies of Mendeleev's periodic table, which had been based on atomic weight.[98]
Frederick Soddy proposes the concept ofisotopes, that elements with the same chemical properties may have differing atomic weights.[99]
J. J. Thomson expanding on the work of Wien, shows that charged subatomic particles can be separated by their mass-to-charge ratio, a technique known asmass spectrometry.[100]
Gilbert N. Lewis publishes "The Atom and the Molecule", the foundation ofvalence bond theory.[101]
Otto Stern andWalther Gerlach establish concept ofquantum mechanical spin in subatomic particles.[102]
Gilbert N. Lewis andMerle Randall publishThermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances, first modern treatise onchemical thermodynamics.[103]
Gilbert N. Lewis develops the electron pair theory ofacid/base reactions.[101]
Louis de Broglie introduces the wave-model of atomic structure, based on the ideas ofwave–particle duality.[104]
Wolfgang Pauli develops theexclusion principle, which states that no two electrons around a single nucleus may have the same quantum state, as described by fourquantum numbers.[105]
Werner Heisenberg develops theuncertainty principle which, among other things, explains the mechanics of electron motion around the nucleus.[107]
Fritz London andWalter Heitler apply quantum mechanics to explain covalent bonding in the hydrogen molecule,[108] which marked the birth ofquantum chemistry.[109]
Linus Pauling publishesPauling's rules, which are key principles for the use ofX-ray crystallography to deduce molecular structure.[110]
Erich Hückel proposesHückel's rule, which explains when a planar ring molecule will havearomatic properties.[111]
Harold Urey discoversdeuterium byfractionally distilling liquid hydrogen.[112]
James Chadwick discovers theneutron.[113]
Linus Pauling andRobert Mulliken quantifyelectronegativity, devising the scales that now bear their names.[114]
Wallace Carothers leads a team of chemists atDuPont who inventnylon, one of the most commercially successful synthetic polymers in history.[115]
Carlo Perrier andEmilio Segrè perform the first confirmed synthesis oftechnetium-97, the first artificially produced element, filling a gap in the periodic table. Though disputed, the element may have been synthesized as early as 1925 byWalter Noddack and others.[116]
Eugene Houdry develops a method of industrial scale catalytic cracking of petroleum, leading to the development of the first modern oil refinery.[117]
Pyotr Kapitsa,John Allen andDon Misener produce supercooledhelium-4, the first zero-viscositysuperfluid, a substance that displays quantum mechanical properties on a macroscopic scale.[118]
Otto Hahn andLise Meitner discover the process ofnuclear fission inuranium.[119]
Linus Pauling publishesThe Nature of the Chemical Bond, a compilation of a decades worth of work onchemical bonding. It is one of the most important modern chemical texts. It explainshybridization theory,covalent bonding andionic bonding as explained through electronegativity, andresonance as a means to explain, among other things, the structure ofbenzene.[110]
Edwin McMillan andPhilip H. Abelson identifyneptunium, the lightest and first synthesizedtransuranium element, found in the products of uraniumfission. McMillan would found a lab atBerkeley that would be involved in the discovery of many new elements and isotopes.[120]
Glenn T. Seaborg takes over McMillan's work creating new atomic nuclei. Pioneers method ofneutron capture and later through othernuclear reactions. Would become the principal or co-discoverer of nine new chemical elements, and dozens of new isotopes of existing elements.[120]
Robert Burns Woodward andWilliam von Eggers Doering successfully synthesized ofquinine. This achievement, characterized of fully artificial chemicals as source for synthesis process, opened an era called as "Woodwardian era" or "chemical era" when many drugs and chemicals, as well asorganic synthesis methods invented. Due to the growth of chemical industry, many fields has grown, such asdrug industry.[121]
Linus Pauling uses X-ray crystallography to deduce thesecondary structure of proteins.[110]
Alan Walsh pioneers the field ofatomic absorption spectroscopy, an importantquantitative spectroscopy method that allows one to measure specific concentrations of a material in a mixture.[124]
Robert Burns Woodward,Geoffrey Wilkinson, andErnst Otto Fischer discover the structure offerrocene, one of the founding discoveries of the field oforganometallic chemistry.[125]
James D. Watson andFrancis Crick propose the structure ofDNA, opening the door to the field ofmolecular biology.[126]
Jens Skou discoversNa⁺/K⁺-ATPase, the first ion-transporting enzyme.[127]
Max Perutz andJohn Kendrew use X-ray crystallography to elucidate aprotein structure, specificallysperm whalemyoglobin.[128]
Neil Bartlett synthesizesxenon hexafluoroplatinate, showing for the first time that the noble gases can form chemical compounds.[129]
George Olah observescarbocations viasuperacid reactions.[130]
Richard R. Ernst performs experiments that will lead to the development of the technique ofFourier transform NMR. This would greatly increase the sensitivity of the technique, and open the door formagnetic resonance imaging or MRI.[131]
Robert Burns Woodward andRoald Hoffmann propose theWoodward–Hoffmann rules, which use the symmetry ofmolecular orbitals to explain the stereochemistry of chemical reactions.[125]
Hitoshi Nozaki andRyōji Noyori discovered the first example ofasymmetric catalysis (hydrogenation) using a structurally well-definedchiraltransition metal complex.[132][133]
John Pople develops theGaussian program greatly easingcomputational chemistry calculations.[134]
Yves Chauvin offered an explanation of the reaction mechanism ofolefin metathesis reactions.[135]
Karl Barry Sharpless and group discover a stereoselectiveoxidation reactions includingSharpless epoxidation,[136][137]Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation,[138][139][140] andSharpless oxyamination.[141][142][143]
Harold Kroto,Robert Curl andRichard Smalley discoverfullerenes, a class of large carbon molecules superficially resembling thegeodesic dome designed by architectR. Buckminster Fuller.[144]
Sumio Iijima useselectron microscopy to discover a type of cylindrical fullerene known as acarbon nanotube, though earlier work had been done in the field as early as 1951. This material is an important component in the field ofnanotechnology.[145]
Firsttotal synthesis of Taxol byRobert A. Holton and his group.[146][147][148]
Eric Cornell andCarl Wieman produce the firstBose–Einstein condensate, a substance that displays quantum mechanical properties on the macroscopic scale.[149]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) vol. II, pp. 41–42.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) pp. 51–52.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)note: authorization required for web access.| By branch |
| ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient history | |||||||||
| Periodic table (timeline) |
| ||||||||
| On specific discoveries | |||||||||
| Scientific disputes | |||||||||
| Other | |||||||||
Branches ofchemistry | |
|---|---|
| Analytical | |
| Theoretical | |
| Physical | |
| Inorganic | |
| Organic | |
| Biological | |
| Interdisciplinarity | |
| See also | |
