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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.
1672: Sir Isaac Newton: discovers that white light is a mixture of distinct coloured rays (the spectrum). 1673: Christiaan Huygens: first study of oscillating system and design of pendulum clocks; 1675: Leibniz, Newton: infinitesimal calculus. 1675: Anton van Leeuwenhoek: observes microorganisms using a refined simple microscope.
Sir Isaac Newton (/ ˈ nj uː t ən /; 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27 [a]) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. [5] Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. [6]
In the 19th century, the basic laws of electromagnetism and statistical mechanics were discovered. Physics was transformed by the discoveries of quantum mechanics, relativity, and atomic theory at the beginning of the 20th century. Physics today may be divided loosely into classical physics and modern physics.
Commonly cited examples of multiple independent discovery are the 17th-century independent formulation of calculus by Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and others, described by A. Rupert Hall; [3] the 18th-century discovery of oxygen by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier and others; and the theory of the evolution ...
1687 - Isaac Newton publishes his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in which he formulates Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation; 1690 - James Bernoulli shows that the cycloid is the solution to the tautochrone problem
1705 – Edmond Halley predicts the return of Halley's comet in 1758, [11] the first use of Newton's laws by someone other than Newton himself. [12] 1728 – Isaac Newton posthumously publishes his cannonball thought experiment. [13] [14] 1742 – Colin Maclaurin studies a self-gravitating uniform liquid drop at equilibrium, the Maclaurin ...
Unification of theories about observable fundamental phenomena of nature is one of the primary goals of physics. [1] [2] [3] The two great unifications to date are Isaac Newton’s unification of gravity and astronomy, and James Clerk Maxwell’s unification of electromagnetism; the latter has been further unified with the concept of electroweak interaction.