benzine ring (c6h6)

Sciences

The book of science

Tom Sharp

This alphabetical index of sciences is not a definitive classification of sciences, nor does it list all sciences, nor is my listing a milestone under a science meant to exclude its relevance to other sciences. This index is only a way to gather milestones in this book into smaller groupings that have something to do with each other, so that if you enjoy one, you might find that you enjoy others in the group. Many milestones are relevant to multiple sciences; sometimes I have listed these milestone under multiple sciences, mainly for milestones that cross disciplines; sometimes I have listed these under only one.


Alphabetical index of sciences

Sciences/Years Milestone Scientist
acoustics
1637 Mersenne’s laws Pythagoras, Vincenzo Galilei, Marin Mersenne
1831 Faraday wave Michael Faraday
1912 Sonar Reginald Fessenden
1940 Bat echolocation Donald Griffin, Robert Galambos
aerodynamics
5th century BCE Kite Mozi, Lu Ban
1485 Parachute Leonardo da Vinci
1672, 1742, 1852 Magnus effect Isaac Newton, Benjamin Robins, Heinrich Gustav Magnus
1738 Bernoulli’s principle Daniel Bernoulli
1871 Wind tunnel Francis Herbert Wenham
1903 Airplane Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright
1934 Coandă effect Henri Coandă
anatomy
180 Medical research Galen
1543 Human anatomy Andreas Vesalius
1628 Circulation of the blood William Harvey
1796 Comparative anatomy Georges Cuvier, John Hunter
1861 Mapping speech Pierre Paul Broca
1889 Nervous system Santiago Ramón y Cajal
1947 Prosopagnosia Joachim Bodamer
archaeology
99,000 - 13,000 BCE Pigment Palaeolithic people
4400 - 3100 BCE Cosmetic pigment Prehistoric Egyptians
architecture
2648 BCE Step pyramid Imhotep
astronomy
2782 BCE Egyptian calendar Old Kingdom of Egypt
2637 BCE Chinese calendar Huangdi, Maimonides
134 BCE Astronomy Hipparchus
46 BCE Julian calendar Caesar
140 AD Geocentrism Claudius Ptolemy
359 Hebrew calendar Hillel II, Maimonides
1050 Maya calendar Mayan people
1542 Nonius Pedro Nunes
1543 Heliocentrism Nicolaus Copernicus
1572 Supernova Tycho Brahe
1609 Planetary orbits Johannes Kepler
1610 Observational astronomy Galileo Galilei
1638 Micrometer William Gascoigne
1639 Transit of Venus Jeremiah Horrocks
1656 Rings of Saturn Christiaan Huygens, James Clerk Maxwell
1671 Planetary distances Giovanni Domenico Cassini
1687 Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton
1705 Halley’s comet Edmond Halley
1781 Discovery of Uranus William Herschel
1796 Origin of our solar system Pierre-Simon Laplace
1801 Discovery of an asteroid Giuseppe Piazzi, Carl Friedrich Gass
1838 Distance to a star Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel
1843 Sunspot cycle Heinrich Samuel Schwabe
1845 Spiral galaxies William Parsons
1846 Discovery of Neptune John Couch Adams, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, Johann Gottfried Galle
1851 Foucault’s pendulum Jean Bernard Léon Foucault
1877 Canals on Mars Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli
1903 Chaos theory Jules Henri Poincaré
1911 Cosmic rays Victor Francis Hess
1918 The universe Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Harlow Shapley, Edwin Powell Hubble, Walter Baade
1920 Stellar evolution Arthur Stanley Eddington, Hans Albrecht Bethe, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Ejnar Hertzsprung, Henry Norris Russell
1929 Expanding universe Georges Lemaître, Edwin Powell Hubble
1931 White dwarfs Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
1950 Oort cloud Jan Hendrik Oort
1933 Radio astronomy Karl Guthe Jansky
astrophysics
1784 Black hole John Michell
1920 Stellar evolution Arthur Eddington, Hans Bethe, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Ejnar Hertzsprung, Henry Norris Russell
1931 White dwarfs Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
1933 Neutron star Walter Baade, Fritz Zwicky
1950 Oort cloud Jan Oort
1962 - 1964 Quasar John Bolton, Maarten Schmidt, Edwin Salpeter, Yakov Zeldovich
1967 Pulsar Jocelyn Bell Burnell
1967 LIGO Richard A. Isaacson, Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, Barry C. Barish
1992 Magnetar Robert Duncan, Christopher Thompson, Chryssa Kouveliotou
2013 Blitzar Heino Falcke, Luciano Rezzolla
atmospheric sciences
1643 Atmospheric pressure Evangelista Torricelli, Blaise Pascal
1661 Air pollution John Evelyn
1735 Trade winds George Hadley
1835 Coriolis effect Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis
1863 Greenhouse effect John Tyndall
1896 Arrhenius equation Svante Arrhenius
1902 Stratosphere Richard Assmann, Léon Teisserenc de Bort
1961 Keeling curve Charles David Keeling
bacteriology
1854, 1884 Vibrio cholerae Filippo Pacini, Robert Koch
1876 Bacillus anthracis Aloys Pollender, Casimir Davaine, Pierre François Olive Rayer, Robert Koch
1878 Germ theory Louis Pasteur
1881 Streptococcus pneumoniae George Miller Sternberg, Louis Pasteur
1882 Mycobacterium tuberculosis Benjamin Marten, Robert Koch
1884 Gram staining Hans Christian Gram
1890 Antitoxins Emil von Behring, Shibasaburō Kitasato
1943 Bacterial genes Salvador Edward Luria, Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück
behavioral science
1852 - 1854 Ideomotor phenomenon William Benjamin Carpenter, Michael Faraday, James Braid, Michel Eugène Chevreul
1904 Child development Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
1924 Conditioned reflexes Jean Piaget
1935 Instincts Karl von Frisch, Konrad Zacharias Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen
1938 Radical behaviorism Burrhus Frederic Skinner
1953 Rapid-eye-movement sleep Nathaniel Kleitman, Eugene Aserinsky, William C. Dement
biogeography
1859 Wallace line Alfred Russel Wallace
biology
335 Science Aristotle
1673 Microorganisms Robert Hooke, Antonie van Leeuwenhock
1735 Naming species Carl Linnaeus
1765 Spontaneous generation Lazzaro Spallanzani
1894 Enzyme specificity Emil Hermann Fischer
1901 Blood groups Karl Landsteiner
1906 Vitamins Frederick Gowland Hopkins
1921 Insulin Frederick Banting, Charles Herbert Best
1924 Child development Jean Piaget
1935 Instincts Karl von Frisch, Konrad Zacharias Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen
1937 Citric-acid cycle Hans Adolf Krebs
1949 Sickle-cell disease Linus Carl Pauling
1953 Abiogenesis Stanley Miller, Harold Urey
1959 Pheromone Adolf Butenandt
biometrics (biostatistics, biometry)
1684 Fingerprint Nehemiah Grew
1889 Measuring individuals Francis Galton
1893 Anthropometry Alphonse Bertillon
biostatistics
1889 Measuring individuals Francis Galton
botany
320 BCE Botany Theophrastus
1694 Plant sexuality Rudolf Jakob Camerarius
1735 Naming species Carl Linnaeus
1799 Humboldt’s voyage Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt
1888 Nitrogen fixation Hermann Hellriegel
1946 Photosynthesis Melvin Calvin
1947 Slime-mold bodies John Tyler Bonner
cartography
240 BCE Geodesy Eratosthenes
1569 Mercator projection Gerardus Mercator (Gerhard de Kremer)
cell biology
1665 - 1831 Cell Robert Hooke, Antonie van Leeuwenhock, Robert Brown
1826 Eggs and embryos Karl Ernst von Baer
1839 Cell theory Matthias Jakob Schleiden, Theodor Schwann, Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier, Hugo von Mohl, Robert Remak, Rudolf Virchow
1846 Protoplasm Hugo von Mohl, Jan Evangelista Purkyně, Thomas Henry Huxley
1858 Communities of cells Rudolf Virchow
1878 Mitosis Walther Flemming, Edouard Van Beneden, Otto Bütschli, Eduard Strasburger
1925, 1962 Prokaryote and eukaryote Édouard Chatton, Roger Stanier, C. B. van Niel
1961 Hayflick limit Leonard Hayflick
1999 Three-domain system Carl Woese, George E. Fox
chemistry
9th century Gunpowder Chinese, Tang dynasty
10th century Rocket Chinese, Tang dynasty
1661 Chymistry Robert Boyle
1662 Boyle’s law Richard Towneley, Henry Power, Robert Boyle
1706 Prussian blue Johann Jacob Diesbach
1774 Combustion Joseph Priestley, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier
1774 Conservation of mass Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier
1780 Mysorean rockets Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan
1784 Hydrogen and water Henry Cavendish
1784, 1903 Birkeland-Eyde process Henry Cavendish, Kristian Birkeland, Sam Eyde
1804 Platinum group metals William Hyde Wollaston, Smithson Tennant
1808 Atomic theory John Dalton
1810 Chlorine Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Humphry Davy
1813 Chemical nomenclature Jöns Jacob Berzelius
1825 Benzene Michael Faraday
1828 Synthesis of urea Friedrich Wöhler
1834 Laws of electrolysis Michael Faraday
1834 Ion Michael Faraday
1834 Faraday efficiency Michael Faraday
1841 Allotropy Jöns Jacob Berzelius
1842 Cyanotype John Herschel
1846 Guncotton Christian Friedrich Schönbein, Rudolf Christian Böttger, F. J. Otto
1847 Nitroglycerin Ascanio Sobrero
1855 Bunsen burner Robert Bunsen, Peter Desaga
1856 Mauve William Henry Perkin
1859 Analytical spectroscopy Robert Bunsen, Gustav Kirchhoff
1865 Benzene ring Friedrich August Kekulé
1867 Dynamite Alfred Bernhard Nobel
1869 Periodic table Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
1873 Changes of state Johannes Diederik van der Waals
1894 Enzyme specificity Emil Hermann Fischer
1897 Electron Joseph John Thomson
1908 Brownian motion Robert Brown, Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann, Albert Einstein, Jean Baptiste Perrin
1909 Synthesis of ammonia Fritz Haber
1911 Atomic number Antonius van den Broek
1913 Atom Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr
1913 Radioactive displacement law Frederick Soddy, Kazimierz Fajans
1922 Isotope Francis William Aston, Frederick Soddy
1931 Deuterium Harold Urey, George M. Murphy, Ferdinand Brickwedde
1939 DDT Paul Hermann Müller
1951 Chemical oscillations Boris Pavlovich Beloüsov, Anatoly Zhabotinsky
1952 - 1991 Fullerene L. V. Radushkevich, V. M. Lukyanovich, Morinobu Endo, Sumio Iijima, Harold Kroto, James R. Heath, Robert Curl, Richard Smalley
1953 Abiogenesis Stanley Miller, Harold Urey
1958 - 1959 Protein crystallography John Kendrew, Max Perutz
comparative anatomy
1796 Comparative anatomy Georges Cuvier, John Hunter
computer science
1847 Boolean algebra George Boole
1822 Difference engine Charles Babbage
1943 Neural networks Warren Sturgis McCulloch, Walter Pitts
1946 Computer Charles Babbage, Alan Mathison Turing, John von Neumann
1947 Transistor William Bradford Shockley, Walter Houser Brattain, John Bardeen
1946 ENIAC John Grist Brainerd, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert
1948 Information theory Claude Elwood Shannon
1948 Cellular automaton John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam
1962 Petri net Carl Adam Petri
1970 Conway’s Game of Life John Horton Conway
1986 Artificial life Christopher Langton
cosmology
140 Geocentrism Claudius Ptolemy
1543 Heliocentrism Nicolaus Copernicus
1796 Origin of our solar system Pierre-Simon Laplace
1918 The universe Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Harlow Shapley, Edwin Powell Hubble, Walter Baade
1950 Oort cloud Jan Hendrik Oort
1971 Plasma cosmology Hannes Alfvén, Oskar Klein
cryptography
118 BCE - 1953 Cipher Polybius, Julius Caesar, Giovan Battista Bellaso, Antoine and Bonaventure Rossignol, Charles Wheatstone, Frank Miller, Felix Delastelle, Fritz Nebel, Lester S. Hill, John F. Byrne
1499 Steganography Johannes Trithemius
1605 Bacon’s cipher Francis Bacon
1948 Information theory Claude Elwood Shannon
1976 - 1991 Public-key cryptography Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, Ralph Merkle, Phil Zimmermann
demography
1644 - 1869 Infographics William Playfair, Florence Nightingale, Charles Joseph Minard
1798 Population pressure Thomas Robert Malthus
1854 Cholera and the pump John Snow
earth sciences
ecology
1799 Humboldt’s voyage Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt
1923 Crop diversity Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov
electromagnetism
546 BCE Triboelectric effect Thales of Miletus
206 BCE Compass Chinese, Han dynasty
1600 Magnetism William Gilbert
1669 Birefringence Rasmus Bartholin
1676 Speed of light Ole Rømer
1729 Aberration of light James Bradley
1745 - 1746 Leyden jar Ewald Georg von Kleist, Pieter van Musschenbroek
1747 Electric charge Benjamin Franklin
1756 Pyroelectricity Franz Ulrich Theodor Aepinus
1778, 1845 Diamagnetism Sebald Justinus Brugmans, Michael Faraday
1785 Coulomb’s law Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
1791, 1820 Galvanometer Luigi Galvani, Hans Christian Ørsted, Johann Schweigger
1799 Electric battery Alessandro Volta
1800 Wave nature of light Thomas Young
1816 Electrical telegraph Francis Ronalds
1819 Wave optics Augustin-Jean Fresnel, François Arago
1820 Electromagnetism Hans Christian Ørsted, André-Marie Ampère, Michael Faraday
1821 Electric conductivity Humphry Davy, Henry Cavendish
1821, 1834 Thermoelectric effect Thomas Johann Seebeck, Hans Christian Ørsted
1827 Ohm’s law Georg Simon Ohm
1831 Faraday’s law of induction Michael Faraday
1831 Electric generator Michael Faraday
1833, 1843 Wheatstone bridge Samuel Hunter Christie, Charles Wheatstone
1834 Peltier effect Jean Charles Athanase Peltier
1836 Faraday cage Michael Faraday
1841 Potentiometer Johann Christian Poggendorff
1842 Magnetostriction James Prescott Joule
1845 - 1913 Magneto-optic and electro-optic effects Michael Faraday, John Kerr, Aimé Cotton, Woldemar Voigt, Pieter Zeeman, Henri Mouton, Johannes Stark, Antonino Lo Surdo
1857 Geissler tube Heinrich Geißler
1859 Lead-acid battery Gaston Planté, Camille Alphonse Faure
1864 Maxwell’s equations James Clerk Maxwell
1869 Cathode ray Johann Wilhelm Hittorf
1869 - 1875 Crookes tube William Crookes
1873 Thermionic emission Frederick Guthrie, Thomas Edison
1874, 1904 Crystal diode Karl Ferdinand Braun, Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody, Greenleaf Whittier Pickard
1876 Telephone Alexander Graham Bell
1880 Piezoelectricity Pierre Curie, Jacques Curie, Gabriel Lippmann
1887 Michelson-Morley experiment Albert A. Michelson, Edward W. Morley
1888 Ampere balance William Thomson Lord Kelvin
1889 Length contraction George Francis FitzGerald
1889 Paschen’s law Friedrich Paschen
1890 Coherer Edouard Branly
1895 X-rays Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen
1895 Curie’s law Pierre Curie
1896 Radio Guglielmo Marconi
1896, 1902 Magnetic detector Ernest Rutherford, Guglielmo Marconi
1896 Diode bridge Karol Pollak
1901 Heterodyne Reginald Fessenden
1902 Hot wire barretter Reginald Fessenden
1903 Electrolytic detector Reginald Fessenden
1904 Telemobiloscope Christian Hülsmeyer
1904 Alexanderson alternator Ernst Alexanderson
1904 Fleming valve John Ambrose Fleming
1905 Phased array Karl Ferdinand Braun
1906 AM broadcasting Reginald Fessenden
1906 - 1912 Triode Lee de Forest, Irving Langmuir
1907 Magnetic domain Pierre Weiss
1908 - 1958 Van Allen belts Kristian Birkeland, Carl Størmer, James Van Allen
1908 Birkeland current Kristian Birkeland
1911 Superconductivity Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
1911 Weiss magneton Pierre Weiss
1913 Atomic battery Henry Moseley
1913 Bohr magneton Neils Bohr
1915 Parson magneton Alfred Lauck Parson
1917 - 1960 Stimulated emission Albert Einstein, Charles Hard Townes, James P. Gordon, Theodore Harold Maiman
1919 Barkhausen effect Heinrich Barkhausen
1920 Ferroelectricity Joseph Valasek
1930 Magnon Felix Bloch
1933 Meissner effect Walther Meissner, Robert Ochsenfeld
1942 Alfvén wave Hannes Alfvén
1946 Dynamo theory Walter M. Elsasser
1947 Transistor William Bradford Shockley, Walter Houser Brattain, John Bardeen
1947 Holography Dennis Gabor
1961 Flexoelectricity Kirill Tolpygo
1964 Rectenna William C. Brown
1971 Memristor Leon Chua
embryology
1817 Germ layers Heinz Christian Pander
1826 Eggs and embryos Karl Ernst von Baer
entomology
1668 Parasites Francesco Redi
1669 Epigenesis Jan Swammerdam
1897 Malarial parasite Alphonse Laveran, Patrick Manson, Ronald Ross
1935 Instincts Karl von Frisch, Konrad Zacharias Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen
1945 Dancing bees Karl von Frisch
epidemiology
1854 Cholera and the pump John Snow
ethnography
1743 Ethnography Gerhard Friedrich Müller
1799 Humboldt’s voyage Alexander von Humboldt
evolution
1796 Comparative anatomy Georges Cuvier, John Hunter
1809 Acquired characteristics Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Lamarck
1842 Dinosaur Richard Owen
1856 Neanderthal man Hermann Schaaffhausen
1859 Origin of species Charles Robert Darwin
1860 Archaeopteryx Richard Owen, Thomas Henry Huxley
1861 Batesian mimicry Henry Walter Bates
1878 Müllerian mimicry Fritz Müller
1889 Aggressive mimicry George and Elizabeth Peckham
1890 Aposematism Alfred Russel Wallace, Edward Bagnall Poulton
1891 Java man Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois
1909 Mutationism Hugo de Vries
1918 Neo-Darwinism Ronald Aylmer Fisher, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Sewall Wright, Theodosius Dobzhansky
1925 Tuang child Raymond Arthur Dart
1953 Abiogenesis Stanley Miller, Harold Urey
fluid dynamics
1752 D’Alembert’s paradox Jean le Rond d’Alembert
1847 Stokes drift George Gabriel Stokes
1851 Reynolds number George Gabriel Stokes
1873 Crookes radiometer William Crookes
1879 Thermal transpiration Osborne Reynolds, Martin Knudsen
1904 Boundary layer Ludwig Prandtl
1913 Tesla turbine Nikola Tesla
food science
1884 Peanut butter Marcellus Gilmore Edson
1906 Vitamins Frederick Gowland Hopkins
1908 Umami Kikunae Ikeda
1912 Scoville scale Wilbur Scoville
1913 Vitamin discoveries Elmer McCollum, Marguerite Davis, Lafayette Mendel, Thomas Burr Osborne, Christiaan Eijkman, Edward Mellanby, Adolf Windaus, Herbert McLean Evans, Katharine Bishop, Carl Dam, George Whipple, George Richards Minot, William Murphy, Albert Szent-Györgyi
1923 Crop diversity Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov
game theory
1944 Game theory John von Neumann, Oskar Morgenstern
genetics
1865 Laws of inheritance Gregor Johann Mendel
1902 Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory Theodor Boveri, Walter Sutton
1904 Genetic linkage William Bateson, Edith Rebecca Saunders, Reginald Punnett
1909 Inborn errors of metabolism Archibald Garrod
1910 Genes Thomas Hunt Morgan, Nettie Maria Stevens, Alfred Henry Sturtevant, Calvin Bridges, Hermann Joseph Muller
1918 Neo-Darwinism Ronald Aylmer Fisher, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Sewall Wright, Theodosius Dobzhansky
1928 Transformation Frederick Griffith
1943 Bacterial genes Salvador Edward Luria, Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück
1944 Molecular genetics Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, Maclyn McCarty
1949 Sickle-cell disease Linus Carl Pauling
1951 Jumping genes Barbara McClintock
1953 DNA structure Francis Crick, James Watson
1970 Reverse transcriptase Howard Temin, David Baltimore
1971 - 1977 Telomere Alexey Olovnikov, Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, Joseph G. Gall, Jack W. Szostak
geodesy
240 BCE Geodesy Eratosthenes
1671 Surveying the earth Jean Picard
1671 Gravimetry Jean Richer
1668 Metric system John Wilkins (and the French Revolution)
1817 Kater’s pendulum Christiaan Huygens, Gaspard de Prony, Henry Kater
1978 Global Positioning System Roger L. Easton, Ivan A. Getting, Bradford Parkinson
geography
1799 Humboldt’s voyage Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt
geology
1785 Earth cycles James Hutton
1797 Catastrophist geology James Hall
1799 Humboldt’s voyage Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt
1812 Mohs scale Friedrich Mohs
1830 Principles of geology Charles Lyell
1840 Ice age Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
1907 Dating rocks Bertram Boltwood
1929 Geomagnetic reversals Motonori Matuyama
geometry
546 BCE Thales’ theorem Thales of Miletus
300 BCE Geometry Euclid
1637 Cartesian coordinates René Descartes
1829 Non-Euclidean geometry Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Janos Bolyai, Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
geophysics
1635 Magnetic declination Henry Gellibrand
1798 ‘Weighing’ the world John Michell, Henry Cavendish
1885 Mountain formation Eduard Suess
1906 Earth interior Richard Dixon Oldham, Andrija Mohorovičić
1912 Continental drift Alfred Lothar Wegener
1929 Geomagnetic reversals Motonori Matuyama
1936 Inner core Inge Lehmann
1937 Goldschmidt classification Victor Goldschmidt
1946 Dynamo theory Walter M. Elsasser
glaciology
1840 Ice age Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
gravimetry
1671 Gravimetry Jean Richer
1817 Kater’s pendulum Christiaan Huygens, Gaspard de Prony, Henry Kater
horology
1657 Pendulum clock Christiaan Huygens
1678 Hooke’s law Robert Hooke
1814 - 1815 Metronome Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel
ichthyology
1922 Eel metamorphosis Johannes Schmidt
1938 Coelacanth Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, James Leonard Brierley Smith
immunology
1796 Vaccination Edward Jenner
1880 - 1881 Anthrax vaccine Jean Joseph Henri Toussaint, Louis Pasteur
1882 Cellular immunity Ilya Ilych (Élie) Metchnikoff
1890 Antitoxins Emil von Behring, Shibasaburō Kitasato
1895 Antivenom Albert Calmette
1898 Viruses Martinus Beijerinck
1921 Tuberculosis vaccine Albert Calmette, Camille Guérin
1949 Immune tolerance Peter Medawar, Frank Macfarlane Burnet
1955 Polio vaccine John Franklin Enders, Thomas Huckle Weller, Frederick Chapman Robbins, Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin
infographics
1644 - 1869 Infographics William Playfair, Florence Nightingale, Charles Joseph Minard
1796 Vaccination Edward Jenner
kinematics
1638 Kinematics Galileo Galilei
1657 Pendulum clock Christiaan Huygens
1671 Gravimetry Jean Richer
1817 Kater’s pendulum Christiaan Huygens, Gaspard de Prony, Henry Kater
linguistics
335 BCE Science Aristotle
1647 - 1678 Philosophical language Francis Lodwick, Thomas Urquhart, George Dalgarno, Thomas Wilkins, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1822 Deciphering hieroglyphics Jean François Champollion
1839 - 1887 International auxiliary language Joseph Schipfer, Joachim Faiguet de Villeneuve, Jean Pirro, Johann Martin Schleyer, L. L. Zamenhof
2018 Shɑrpεn Tom Sharp
logic
335 BCE Science Aristotle
1847 Boolean algebra George Boole
1931 Incompleteness theorems Kurt Gödel
manufacturing
105 Paper Cai Lun
200 Woodblock printing Chinese, Han dynasty
1040 Moveable-type printing Bi Sheng
materials science
1862 Celluloid Alexander Parkes
1893 Galalith Auguste Trillat
1907 Bakelite Leo Baekeland
1935 Nylon Wallace Hume Carothers
1953 CorningWare S. Donald Stookey
1964 Kevlar Stephanie Kwolek
mathematics
495 BCE Proof of the Pythagorean theorem Pythagoras
300 BCE Geometry Euclid
285 Diophantine equation Diophantus
628 Zero Brahmagupta
820 Algebra Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī
1202 Number system Leonardo Pisano Bigollo (Fibonacci)
1614 Logarithm John Napier
1637 Cartesian coordinates René Descartes
1644 - 1869 Infographics William Playfair, Florence Nightingale, Charles Joseph Minard
1656 Infinite and infinitesimal John Wallis
1668, 1669 Fundamental theorem of calculus James Gregory, Isaac Barrow
1671, 1684 Calculus Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1679 Binary number Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1683 Euler’s number Jacob Bernoulli, Leonhard Euler
1687 Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton
1736 Graph theory Leonhard Euler
1736 - 1895 Topology Leonhard Euler, Antoine-Jean Lhuilier, August Ferdinand Möbius, Johann Benedict Listing, Henri Poincaré
1758 Euler characteristic Leonhard Euler
1768 Pi Johann Heinrich Lambert, Ferdinand von Lindemann
1771, 1885 Knot theory Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde, Peter Guthrie Tait
1829 Non-Euclidean geometry Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Janos Bolyai, Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
1864 Maxwell’s equations James Clerk Maxwell
1903 Chaos theory Jules Henri Poincaré
1904 Lorentz transformations Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré
1918, 1975 Fractal dimension Felix Hausdorff, Benoit Mandelbrot
1975 Fractal Benoit Mandelbrot
mechanics
2400 BCE—1820 CE Computing devices (world history)
260 BCE Mechanical advantage Archimedes
70 Windmill Hero of Alexandria
1620 Submarine Cornelis Drebbel
1678 Hooke’s law Robert Hooke
1772, 1796 Hydraulic ram John Whitehurst, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier
1805 Oruktor Amphibolos Oliver Evans
1860 Roots blower Philander Roots, Francis Marion Roots
1874 Rotary vane pump Charles C. Barnes
1885 Automobile Karl Benz
medicine
400 BCE Medicine Hippocrates
70 Traditional medicine Pedanius Dioscorides
180 Medical research Galen
1025 The Canon of Medicine Avicenna
1543 Human anatomy Andreas Vesalius
1614 Metabolism Sanctorius Sanctorius
1796 Vaccination Edward Jenner
1799 Placebo effect John Haygarth
1842 - 1846 Anesthesia Crawford Long, Horace Wells, William T. G. Morton
1865 Antiseptic surgery Joseph Lister
1878 Germ theory Louis Pasteur
1882 Cellular immunity Ilya Ilych (Élie) Metchnikoff
1896 Preventing cholera Ernest Hanbury Hankin
1897 Aspirin Arthur Eichengrün, Felix Hoffmann
1897 Malarial parasite Alphonse Laveran, Patrick Manson, Ronald Ross
1898 Viruses Martinus Beijerinck
1901 Blood groups Karl Landsteiner
1921 Insulin Frederick Banting, Charles Herbert Best
1928 Penicillin Alexander Fleming
1944 - 1960 The pill Russell Earl Marker, George Rosenkranz, Carl Djerassi, Luis E. Miramontes, Frank B. Colton, Margaret Sanger, Katharine McCormick, Gregory Pincus, Min Chueh Chang, John Rock
metabolism
1614 Metabolism Sanctorius Sanctorius
1628 Circulation of the blood William Harvey
1865 Regulating the body Claude Bernard
1909 Inborn errors of metabolism Archibald Garrod
1937 Citric-acid cycle Hans Adolf Krebs
1944 - 1960 The pill Russell Earl Marker, George Rosenkranz, Carl Djerassi, Luis E. Miramontes, Frank B. Colton, Margaret Sanger, Katharine McCormick, Gregory Pincus, Min Chueh Chang, John Rock
metallurgy
8700 BCE Copper Middle East
6400 BCE Lead Çatalhöyük
4600 BCE Gold Varna Necropolis
4000 BCE Silver Asia Minor
3200 BCE Iron Gerzeh
3000 BCE Tin Mesopotamia, Balkans
2000 - 1500 BCE Mercury China, India, Egypt
1000 BCE Zinc Judea, India, Nagarjuna
1750 Platinum Antonio de Ulloa, Charles Wood, William Brownrigg, William Hyde Wollaston, Smithson Tennant
1804 Platinum group metals William Hyde Wollaston, Smithson Tennant
meteorology
1799 Humboldt’s voyage Alexander von Humboldt
1840 Ice age Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
1914 Climate cycles Milutin Milanković
1920 Weather forecasting Vilhelm Friman Koren Bjerknes, Jacob Aall Bonnevie Bjerknes
metrology
1542 Nonius Pedro Nunes
1631 Vernier scale Pierre Vernier
1638 Micrometer William Gascoigne
1643 Atmospheric pressure Evangelista Torricelli, Blaise Pascal
1668 Metric system John Wilkins (and the French Revolution)
1739 Dividing engine Henry Hindley
1895 Curie’s law Pierre Curie
molecular biology
1949 Sickle-cell disease Linus Carl Pauling
neuroscience
1889 Nervous system Camillo Golgi, Santiago Ramón y Cajal
1914 Neurotransmitters Henry Hallett Dale, George Barger, Otto Loewi
1943 Neural networks Warren Sturgis McCulloch, Walter Pitts
1952 Nerve impulses Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, Andrew Fielding Huxley
1952 Nerve growth Rita Levi-Montalcini
1956 Visual phototransduction George Wald
oceanography
1859 Wallace line Alfred Russel Wallace
1879 Kelvin wave William Thomson Lord Kelvin
1894 Nansen bottle Fridtjof Nansen, Shale Niskin
1902 Ekman transport Vagn Walfrid Ekman, Fridtjof Nansen
1927 Langmuir circulation Irving Langmuir
1939 Rossby wave Carl-Gustaf Rossby
optics
984, 1602, 1621, 1637 Snell’s law Ibn Sahl, Thomas Harriot, Willebrord Snellius, René Descartes
1025 Optics Abu-‘Ali Al-Hasan ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen)
1413 - 1420 Perspective Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Piero della Francesca
1590 - 1608 Microscope and telescope Zacharias Janssen, Hans Lippershey, Jacob Metius, Cornelis Drebbel
1662 Fermat’s principle Pierre de Fermat
1666 Theory of color Isaac Newton
1669 Birefringence Rasmus Bartholin
1678, 1816 Huygens—Fresnel principle Christiaan Huygens, Augustin-Jean Fresnel
1819 Wave optics Augustin-Jean Fresnel, François Arago
1828 Nicol prism William Nicol
1888 Cinematography Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, Thomas Edison, Auguste and Louis Lumière
1914 Glossmeter Leonard R. Ingersoll
1947 Holography Dennis Gabor
paleontology
1565 Fossils Conrad Gessner
1796 Comparative anatomy Georges Cuvier, John Hunter
1834 Cro-Magnons Édouard Lartet, Louis Lartet
1842 Dinosaur Richard Owen
1856 Neanderthal man Hermann Schaaffhausen
1859 Origin of species Charles Robert Darwin
1860 Archaeopteryx Richard Owen, Thomas Henry Huxley
1909 Burgess shale Charles Doolittle Walcott
palynology
1670 Palynology Nehemiah Grew, Robert Kidston
parasitology
1668 Parasites Francesco Redi
1897 Malarial parasite Alphonse Laveran, Patrick Manson, Ronald Ross
particle physics
1897 Electron Joseph John Thomson
1925, 1926 Pauli exclusion principle/Exchange interaction Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac
1932 Neutron James Chadwick
1932 Antimatter Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, Carl David Anderson
1932 - 1951 Positronium Carl David Anderson, Stjepan Mohorovičić, Martin Deutsch
1932 Phonon Igor Tamm
1934, 1947 Meson Hideki Yukawa, Cecil Powell, César Lattes, Giuseppe Occhialini
1935 Majorana fermion Ettore Majorana
1936 Muon Carl David Anderson, Seth Neddermeyer
1956 Neutrino Wolfgang Pauli, Frederick Reines, Clyde Cowan
1960 Muonium Vernon W. Hughes
1964 Quark Murray Gell-Mann, George Zweig
1971 - 1977 Tau Yung-su Tsai, Martin Lewis Perl
pathology
1854 Cholera and the pump John Snow
1878 Germ theory Louis Pasteur
1897 Malarial parasite Alphonse Laveran, Patrick Manson, Ronald Ross
1909 Inborn errors of metabolism Archibald Garrod
1949 Sickle-cell disease Linus Carl Pauling
pharmacology
70 Traditional medicine Pedanius Dioscorides
1897 Aspirin Arthur Eichengrün, Felix Hoffmann
1908, 1935 Sulfanilamide Paul Gelmo, Gerhard Domagk
1910 Chemotherapy Paul Ehrlich
1928 Penicillin Alexander Fleming
1944 - 1960 The pill Russell Earl Marker, George Rosenkranz, Carl Djerassi, Luis E. Miramontes, Frank B. Colton, Margaret Sanger, Katharine McCormick, Gregory Pincus, Min Chueh Chang, John Rock
1945 Structure of penicillin Dorothy Hodgkin
philosophy of science
335 BCE Science Aristotle
1620 Scientific method Francis Bacon
1735 Naming species Carl Linnaeus
1799 Humboldt’s voyage Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt
1833 “Scientist” William Whewell
1867 Dynamite Alfred Bernhard Nobel
1876 Industrial research laboratory Thomas Edison
1950 Turing test Alan Turing
physics
335 BCE Science Aristotle
1637 Mersenne’s laws Pythagoras, Vincenzo Galilei, Marin Mersenne
1638 Kinematics Galileo Galilei
1643 Atmospheric pressure Evangelista Torricelli, Blaise Pascal
1662 Boyle’s law Richard Towneley, Henry Power, Robert Boyle
1666 Theory of color Isaac Newton
1669 Birefringence Rasmus Bartholin
1699 Tribology Leonardo da Vinci, Guillaume Amontons
1705, 1894 Gas-discharge lamp Francis Hauksbee, Nikola Tesla
1738 Bernoulli’s principle Daniel Bernoulli
1765 Steam engine James Watt
1798 ‘Weighing’ the world John Michell, Henry Cavendish
1800 Wave nature of light Thomas Young
1802 - 1879 Incandescent light Humphry Davy, Thomas Edison
1808 Atomic theory John Dalton
1815 Prout’s hypothesis William Prout
1814 Spectral lines Joseph von Fraunhofer
1819 Wave optics Augustin-Jean Fresnel, François Arago
1823 Liquefaction of gases Michael Faraday
1834 Laws of electrolysis Michael Faraday
1842 Doppler effect Christian Doppler
1847 Laws of thermodynamics Benjamin Thompson, Sadi Carnot, James Prescott Joule, Rudolf Clausius
1863 Greenhouse effect John Tyndall
1864 Maxwell’s equations James Clerk Maxwell
1869 Periodic table Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
1873 Changes of state Johannes Diederik van der Waals
1893 Diesel engine Rudolf Diesel
1895 X-rays Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen
1896 Radioactivity Antoine Henri Becquerel, Marie Skłodowska Curie, Pierre Curie, Ernest Rutherford, Frederick Soddy
1897 Townsend discharge John Sealy Townsend
1900 Quanta Max Planck, Albert Einstein
1900 Gamma ray Paul Ulrich Villard
1903 Airplane Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright
1903 Spinthariscope William Crookes
1905 Special relativity Albert Einstein
1908 Brownian motion Robert Brown, Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann, Albert Einstein, Jean Baptiste Perrin
1911 Superconductivity Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
1911 Cosmic rays Victor Francis Hess
1911 - 1920 Sagnac effect Max von Laue, Georges Sagnac
1913 Atom Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr
1915 General relativity Albert Einstein
1916 Chemical bond Gilbert N. Lewis
1916 Schwartzchild radius Karl Schwarzschild
1917 - 1960 Stimulated emission Albert Einstein, Charles Hard Townes, James P. Gordon, Theodore Harold Maiman
1918 Noether’s theorem Emmy Noether
1920 Stellar evolution Arthur Stanley Eddington, Hans Albrecht Bethe, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Ejnar Hertzsprung, Henry Norris Russell
1923 Compton scattering Arthur Holly Compton
1924 Plasma Irving Langmuir
1925 Wave-particle duality Werner Karl Heisenberg, Louis-Victor de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger
1925 Bose-Einstein condensate Satyendra Nath Bose, Albert Einstein
1928 - 1929 Plasma oscillation Irving Langmuir, Lewi Tonks
1931 White dwarfs Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
1932 Neutron James Chadwick
1934 Cherenkov radiation Pavel Cherenkov, Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov, Igor Tamm, Pavel Frank
1935 Geiger counter John Sealy Townsend, Hans Geiger, Walther Müller
1935 Induced radioactivity Irène Joliot-Curie, Frédéric Joliot-Curie
1937 Superfluidity Pyotr Kapitsa, John F. Allen, Don Misener
1942 Nuclear fission Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann, Lise Meitner, Otto Robert Frisch, Rudolf Peierls, Enrico Fermi
1947 Radiocarbon dating Willard Frank Libby
1947 Transistor William Bradford Shockley, Walter Houser Brattain, John Bardeen
1948 Quantum electrodynamics Hans Albrecht Bethe, Julian Seymour Schwinger, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Freeman John Dyson, Richard Phillips Feynman
1956 Parity violation Tsung-Dao Lee, Chen-Ning Yang
1956 Cooper pair Leon Cooper
1957 BCS theory John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, John Robert Schrieffer
1958 Mössbauer effect Rudolf Mössbauer
1964 CP violation James Cronin, Val Fitch
2003 Fermionic condensate Deborah Jin, Rudolf Grimm, Wolfgang Ketterle
2017 Time crystal Frank Wilczek, Krzysztof Sacha, Norman Yao, Christopher Monroe, Mikhail Lukin
plate tectonics
1885 Mountain formation Eduard Suess
1906 Earth interior Richard Dixon Oldham, Andrija Mohorovičić
1912 Continental drift Alfred Lothar Wegener
1929 Geomagnetic reversals Motonori Matuyama
pneumatics
70 Windmill Hero of Alexandria
1679 Pressure cooker, safety valve Denis Papin
political science
335 BCE Science Aristotle
primatology
1834 Cro-Magnons Édouard Lartet, Louis Lartet
1856 Neanderthal man Hermann Schaaffhausen
1891 Java man Eugène Dubois
1925 Tuang child Raymond Dart
1959 Paranthropus boisei Mary Leakey, Louis Leakey
1960 Chimpanzees and humans Jane Goodall
protistology
1860 Protist John Hogg
psychiatry
1938, 1943 Autism Hans Asperger, Leo Kanner
psychology
1682 Memory Robert Hooke
1895 Libido Sigmund Freud
1904 Conditioned reflexes Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
1924 Child development Jean Piaget
1938 Radical behaviorism Burrhus Frederic Skinner
psychometrics
1904 Intelligence testing Alfred Binet
probability
1654 Probability theory Blaise Pascal, Pierre de Fermat
1763 Bayes’ theorem Thomas Bayes
quantum mechanics
1900 Planck constant Max Planck
1900 Quanta Max Planck, Albert Einstein
1925 Wave-particle duality Werner Heisenberg, Louis de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger
1926 Schrödinger equation Erwin Schrödinger
1927 Uncertainty principle Werner Heisenberg
1928 Dirac equation Paul Dirac
1930 Zitterbewegung Erwin Schrödinger
1930 Quasiparticles Felix Bloch, Yakov Frenkel, Paul Dirac, Igor Tamm, Lev Landau, Ettore Majorana, Lars Onsager, Kirill Tolpygo, David Pines, David Bohm, Leon Cooper, Tony Skyrme, Robert B. Laughlin, Horst Ludwig Störmer, Daniel Tsui, Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Joaquin Mazdak Luttinger, Jeroen van den Brink, Daniel I. Khomskii, George Sawatzky
1948 Quantum electrodynamics Hans Albrecht Bethe, Julian Seymour Schwinger, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Freeman John Dyson, Richard Phillips Feynman
1948 Casimir effect Hendrik Casimir, Dirk Polder
1948 Feynman diagram Richard Feynman
sociobiology
1922 Coefficient of relationship Sewall Wright
1964 Altruism W. D. Hamilton
1975 Sociobiology E. O. Wilson
sociology
1944 - 1960 The pill Russell Earl Marker, George Rosenkranz, Carl Djerassi, Luis E. Miramontes, Frank B. Colton, Margaret Sanger, Katharine McCormick, Gregory Pincus, Min Chueh Chang, John Rock
spectronomy
1814 Spectral lines Joseph von Fraunhofer
speleology
1895 Speleology Édouard-Alfred Martel
stratigraphy
1669 Stratigraphy Nicolas Steno
1815 Fossil sequences William Smith
stoichiometry
1774 Combustion Joseph Priestley, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier
1774 Conservation of mass Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier
1784 Hydrogen and water Henry Cavendish
1811, 1909 Avogadro constant Amedeo Avogadro, Jean Baptiste Perrin
telecommunication
1876 Industrial research laboratory Thomas Edison
1876 Telephone Alexander Graham Bell
1896 Radio Guglielmo Marconi
1899 Loading coil Oliver Heaviside, George Ashley Campbell, Mihajlo Pupin
1942 Frequency-hopping Hedy Lamarr, George Antheil
1948 Information theory Claude Elwood Shannon
theoretical biology
1798 Population pressure Thomas Robert Malthus
1952
 
 
Turing pattern Alan Turing
thermodynamics
1678 - 1876 Internal combustion engine Jean de Hautefeuille, Christiaan Huygens, Denis Papin, François Isaac de Rivaz, Nicéphore Niépce, Claude Niépce, Samuel Brown, William Barnett, Eugenio Barsanti, Felice Matteucci, Étienne Lenoir, Alphonse Beau de Rochas, Nikolaus Otto, Eugen Langen
1756 Leidenfrost effect Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost
1761 Latent heat Joseph Black
1765 Steam engine James Watt
1805 - 1876 Vapor-compression refrigeration Oliver Evans, Jacob Perkins, John Gorrie, Alexander Twining, James Harrison, Ferdinand and Edmond Carré, Carl von Linde
1805 Oruktor Amphibolos Oliver Evans
1816 Stirling engine Robert Stirling
1842 Conservation of energy Julius von Mayer, James Prescott Joule
1847 Laws of thermodynamics Benjamin Thompson, Sadi Carnot, James Prescott Joule, Rudolf Clausius
1852 Joule-Thomson effect James Prescott Joule, William Thomson Lord Kelvin
1855, 1865 Marangoni effect James Thomson, Carlo Marangoni
1871 Resistance thermometer Carl Wilhelm Siemens
1873 Gibbs free energy Josiah Willard Gibbs
1876 Chemical potential Josiah Willard Gibbs
1879 Stefan-Boltzmann law Josef Stefan, Ludwig Boltzmann
1885 Automobile Karl Benz
1893 Diesel engine Rudolf Diesel
1922 Absorption refrigerator Baltzar von Platen, Carl Munters, Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard
1963 Mpemba effect Erasto Batholomeo Mpemba, Denis G. Osborne
1974 Hawking radiation Stephen Hawking
thermometry
1701 Newton scale Isaac Newton
1701 Rømer scale Ole Christensen Rømer
1724 Fahrenheit scale Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
1730 Réaumur scale René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur
1732 Delisle scale Joseph-Nicolas Delisle
1742 Centigrade scale Anders Celsius, Jean-Pierre Christin
1759 Pyrometer James Ferguson
1878 Bolometer Samuel Pierpont Langley
1783 Wedgwood scale Josiah Wedgwood
1803 Platinum pyrometer Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, John Frederic Daniell
1818 Aethrioscope John Leslie
1848 Kelvin scale William Thompson Lord Kelvin
1901 Disappearing-filament pyrometer Ferdinand Kurlbaum, Ludwig Holborn, Harmon Northrup Morse
toxicology
1538 Toxicology Paracelsus
1895 Antivenom Albert Calmette
tribology
1669 Tribology Leonardo da Vinci, Guillaume Amontons
1757 Triboelectric series Johan Carl Wilcke
virology
1898 Viruses Martinus Beijerinck
1915, 1917 Bacteriophage Frederick Twort, Félix d’Herelle
zoology
335 BCE Science Aristotle
1799 Humboldt’s voyage Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt
1940 Bat echolocation Donald Griffin, Robert Galambos
zymology
1878 Germ theory Louis Pasteur