This timeline lists significant discoveries in physics and the laws of nature, including experimental discoveries, theoretical proposals that were confirmed experimentally, and theories that have significantly influenced current thinking in modern physics. Such discoveries are often a multi-step, multi-person process. Multiple discovery sometimes occurs when multiple research groups discover the same phenomenon at about the same time, and scientific priority is often disputed. The listings below include some of the most significant people and ideas by date of publication or experiment.
Antiquity 624–546 BCE – Thales of Miletus: Introduced natural philosophy 610–546 BCE – Anaximander: Concept of Earth floating in space 460–370 BCE – Democritus: Atomism via thought experiment 384–322 BCE – Aristotle: Aristotelian physics, earliest effective theory of physics c. 300 BCE – Euclid: Euclidean geometry c. 250 BCE – Archimedes: Archimedes' principle 310–230 BCE – Aristarchos: Proposed heliocentricism 276–194 BCE – Eratosthenes: Circumference of the Earth measured 190–150 BCE – Seleucus: Support of heliocentrism based on reasoning 220–150 BCE – Apollonius: and Hipparchus: Invention of Astrolabe 205–86 BCE – Hipparchus or unknown: Antikythera mechanism an analog computer of planetary motions 129 BCE – Hipparchus: Hipparchus star catalog of the entire sky and precession of the equinoxes 60 CE – Hero of Alexandria: Catoptrics: Hero's principle of the shortest path of light c.150 CE – Ptolemy: Ptolomaic model standardized geocentricism
Middle Ages 500 CE – John Philoponus: Theory of impetus 984 CE – Ibn Sahl: Law of refraction 1010 – Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen): Optics, finite speed of light c. 1030 – Ibn Sina (Avicenna): Concept of force c. 1050 – al-Biruni: Speed of light is much larger than speed of sound c. 1100 – Al-Baghdadi: Theory of motion with distinction between velocity and acceleration
16th century 1514 – Nicolaus Copernicus: Heliocentrism 1586 – Simon Stevin: Delft tower experiment
17th century 1608 – Earliest known telescopes 1609, 1619 – Kepler: Kepler's laws of planetary motion 1610 – Galileo Galilei: discovered the Galilean moons of Jupiter 1613 – Galileo Galilei: Inertia 1621 – Willebrord Snellius: Snell's law 1632 – Galileo Galilei: The Galilean principle (the laws of motion are the same in all inertial frames) 1660 – Blaise Pascal: Pascal's law 1660 – Robert Hooke: Hooke's law 1662 – Robert Boyle: Boyle's law 1663 – Otto von Guericke: first electrostatic generator 1676 – Ole Rømer: Rømer's determination of the speed of light traveling from the moons of Jupiter. 1678 – Christiaan Huygens mathematical wave theory of light, published in his Treatise on Light 1687 – Isaac Newton: Newton's laws of motion, and Newton's law of universal gravitation
18th century 1738 – Daniel Bernoulli: First model of the kinetic theory of gases 1745–46 – Ewald Georg von Kleist and Pieter van Musschenbroek: discovery of the Leyden jar 1752 – Benjamin Franklin: kite experiment 1760 – Joseph-Louis Lagrange: Lagrangian mechanics 1782 – Antoine Lavoisier: conservation of mass 1785 – Charles-Augustin de Coulomb: Coulomb's inverse-square law for electric charges confirmed 1800 – Alessandro Volta: discovery of voltaic pile
19th century 1800 – William Herschel: Infrared light 1801 – Thomas Young: Wave theory of light 1801 – Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Ultraviolet light 1803 – John Dalton: Atomic theory of matter 1806 – Thomas Young: Kinetic energy 1814 – Augustin-Jean Fresnel: Wave theory of light, optical interference 1820 – André-Marie Ampère, Jean-Baptiste Biot, and Félix Savart: Evidence for electromagnetic interactions (Biot–Savart law) 1822 – Joseph Fourier: Heat equation 1824 – Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot: Ideal gas cycle analysis (Carnot cycle), internal combustion engine 1826 – Ampère's circuital law 1827 – Georg Ohm: Electrical resistance 1831 – Michael Faraday: Faraday's law of induction 1833 – William Rowan Hamilton: Hamiltonian mechanics 1838 – Michael Faraday: Lines of force 1838 – Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Carl Friedrich Gauss: Earth's magnetic field 1842–43 – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin and Julius von Mayer: Conservation of energy 1842 – Christian Doppler: Doppler effect 1845 – Michael Faraday: Faraday rotation (interaction of light and magnetic field) 1847 – Hermann von Helmholtz & James Prescott Joule: Conservation of Energy 2 1850–51 – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin & Rudolf Clausius: Second law of thermodynamics 1857 – Rudolf Clausius: Introduced translational, rotational, and vibrational molecular motions 1857 – Rudolf Clausius: Introduced the concept of mean free path 1860 – James Clerk Maxwell: Introduced statistical mechanics with the Maxwell distribution 1861 – Gustav Kirchhoff: Black body 1861–62 – Maxwell's equations 1863 – Rudolf Clausius: Entropy 1864 – James Clerk Maxwell: A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (electromagnetic radiation) 1867 – James Clerk Maxwell: On the Dynamical Theory of Gases (kinetic theory of gases) 1871–89 – Ludwig Boltzmann & Josiah Willard Gibbs: Statistical mechanics (Boltzmann equation, 1872) 1873 – Maxwell: A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism 1884 – Boltzmann derives Stefan radiation law 1887 – Michelson–Morley experiment 1887 – Heinrich Rudolf Hertz: Electromagnetic waves 1888 – Johannes Rydberg: Rydberg formula 1889, 1892 – Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction 1893 – Wilhelm Wien: Wien's displacement law for black-body radiation 1895 – Wilhelm Röntgen: X-rays 1896 – Henri Becquerel: Radioactivity 1896 – Pieter Zeeman: Zeeman effect 1897 – J. J. Thomson: Electron discovered 1900 – Max Planck: Formula for black-body radiation – the quanta solution to radiation ultraviolet catastrophe 1900 – Paul Villard: Gamma rays
20th century 1904 – J. J. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom 1904 1905 – Albert Einstein: Special relativity, proposes light quantum (later named photon) to explain the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, Mass–energy equivalence 1908 – Hermann Minkowski: Minkowski space 1911 – Ernest Rutherford: Discovery of the atomic nucleus (Rutherford model) 1911 – Kamerlingh Onnes: Superconductivity 1912 – Victor Francis Hess: Cosmic rays 1913 – Niels Bohr: Bohr model of the atom 1915 – Albert Einstein: General relativity 1915 – Emmy Noether: Noether's theorem relates symmetries to conservation laws. 1916 – Schwarzschild metric modeling gravity outside a large sphere 1917 – Ernest Rutherford: Proton proved 1919 – Arthur Eddington: Light bending confirmed – evidence for general relativity 1919–1926 – Kaluza–Klein theory proposing unification of gravity and electromagnetism 1922 – Alexander Friedmann proposes expanding universe 1922–37 – Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric cosmological model 1923 – Stern–Gerlach experiment 1923 – Edwin Hubble: Galaxies discovered 1923 – Arthur Compton: Particle nature of photons confirmed by observation of photon momentum 1924 – Bose–Einstein statistics 1924 – Louis de Broglie: De Broglie wave 1925 – Werner Heisenberg: Matrix mechanics 1925–27 – Niels Bohr & Max Planck: Quantum mechanics 1925 – Stellar structure understood 1926 – Fermi–Dirac Statistics 1926 – Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger Equation 1927 – Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty principle 1927 – Georges Lemaître: Big Bang 1927 – Paul Dirac: Dirac equation 1927 – Max Born: Born rule 1928 – Paul Dirac proposes the antiparticle 1929 – Edwin Hubble: Expansion of the universe confirmed 1932 – Carl David Anderson: Antimatter (positrons) discovered 1932 – James Chadwick: Neutron discovered 1933 – Ernst Ruska: Invention of the electron microscope 1935 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: Chandrasekhar limit for black hole collapse 1937 – Majorana particle, hypothesized as a fermion that is its own antiparticle. 1937 – Muon discovered by Carl David Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer 1938 – Pyotr Kapitsa: Superfluidity discovered 1938 – Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann Nuclear fission discovered 1938–39 – Stellar fusion explains energy production in stars 1939 – Uranium fission discovered 1941 – Feynman path integral 1944 – Theory of magnetism in 2D: Ising model 1947 – C.F. Powell, Giuseppe Occhialini, César Lattes: Pion discovered 1948 – Richard Feynman, Shinichiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, Freeman Dyson: Quantum electrodynamics 1948 – Invention of the maser and laser by Charles Townes 1948 – Feynman diagrams 1955 – Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain: Antiproton discovered 1956 – Bruce Cork: Antineutron discovered 1956 – Electron neutrino discovered 1956–57 – Parity violation proved by Chien-Shiung Wu 1957 – Many-worlds, also called the relative state formulation or the Everett interpretation. 1957 – BCS theory explaining superconductivity 1959–60 – Role of topology in quantum physics predicted and confirmed 1962 – Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'eman: SU(3) theory of strong interactions 1962 – Muon neutrino discovered 1963 – Chien-Shiung Wu confirms the conserved vector current theory for weak interactions 1963 – Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig: Quarks predicted 1964 – Bell's Theorem initiates quantitative study of quantum entanglement 1964 – First black hole, Cygnus X-1, discovered 1964 – CP violation discovered by James Cronin and Val Fitch. 1965 – Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson: Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) discovered 1967 – Unification of weak interaction and electromagnetism (electroweak theory) 1967 – Solar neutrino problem found 1967 – Pulsars (rotating neutron stars) discovered 1968 – Experimental evidence for quarks found 1968 – Vera Rubin: Dark matter theories 1970–73 – Standard Model of elementary particles invented 1971 – Helium 3 superfluidity 1971–75 – Michael Fisher, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Leo Kadanoff: Renormalization group 1972 – Jacob Bekenstein: Black Hole Entropy suggested 1974 – Stephen Hawking: Black hole radiation (Hawking radiation) predicted 1974 – Charmed quark discovered 1975 – Tau lepton found 1975 – Abraham Pais and Sam Treiman: Introduction of the Standard Model of particle physics term 1977 – Bottom quark found 1977 – Anderson localization recognized (Nobel prize in 1977, Philip W. Anderson, Mott, Van Fleck) 1980 – Strangeness as a signature of quark–gluon plasma predicted 1980 – Richard Feynman proposes quantum computing 1980 – Quantum Hall effect 1981 – Alan Guth Theory of cosmic inflation proposed 1982 – Aspect experiment confirms violations of Bell's inequalities 1981 – Fractional quantum Hall effect discovered 1984 – W and Z bosons directly observed 1984 – First laboratory implementation of quantum cryptography 1987 – High-temperature superconductivity discovered in 1986, awarded Nobel prize in 1987 (J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alexander Müller) 1989–98 – Quantum annealing 1993 – Quantum teleportation of unknown states proposed 1994 – Shor's algorithm discovered, initiating the serious study of quantum computation 1994–97 – Matrix models/M-theory 1995 – Wolfgang Ketterle: Bose–Einstein condensate observed 1995 – Top quark discovered 1995–2000 – Econophysics and Kinetic exchange models of markets 1997 – Juan Maldacena proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence 1998 – Accelerating expansion of the universe discovered by the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team 1998 – Atmospheric neutrino oscillation established 1999 – Lene Vestergaard Hau: Slow light experimentally demonstrated 2000 – Quark–gluon plasma found 2000 – Tau neutrino found
21st century 2001 – Solar neutrino oscillation observed, resolving the solar neutrino problem 2003 – WMAP observations of cosmic microwave background 2004 – Exceptional properties of graphene discovered 2007 – Giant magnetoresistance recognized (Nobel prize, Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg) 2008 – First artificial production of antimatter (positrons), by the LLNL 2008 – 16-year study of stellar orbits around Sagittarius A* provides strong evidence for a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy 2009 – Planck begins observations of cosmic microwave background 2012 – Higgs boson found by the Compact Muon Solenoid and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider 2015 – Gravitational waves are observed. 2016 – Topological order – topological phase transitions and order – recognized (Nobel prize, David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz) 2019 – First image of a black hole 2023 – Experimental evidence of stochastic gravitational wave background 2023 – First "image" of the Milky Way in neutrinos instead of light 2024 – The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) released a precise 3D map of the cosmos, providing evidence that dark energy, the force accelerating the universe's expansion, may be weakening over time, challenging the cosmological constant and opening doors to new theories. 2025 – Discovery of a paradigm-shifting new black hole type, challenging existing theories of black hole formation and behavior.
See also Physics List of timelines List of unsolved problems in physics
References