History of physics

Physics is a branch of science whose

primary objects of study are matter and
energy. Discoveries of physics find
applications throughout the natural
sciences and in technology. Historically,
physics emerged from the scientific
revolution of the 17th century, grew rapidly
in the 19th century, then was transformed
by a series of discoveries in the 20th
century. Physics today may be divided
loosely into classical physics and modern
physics.

A Newton's cradle, named after

physicist Isaac Newton

Many detailed articles on specific topics

are available through the Outline of the
history of physics.

Ancient history
Elements of what became physics were
drawn primarily from the fields of
astronomy, optics, and mechanics, which
were methodologically united through the
study of geometry. These mathematical
disciplines began in antiquity with the
Babylonians and with Hellenistic writers
such as Archimedes and Ptolemy. Ancient
philosophy, meanwhile, included what was
called "Physics".

Greek concept

The move towards a rational

understanding of nature began at least
since the Archaic period in Greece (650–
480 BCE) with the Pre-Socratic
philosophers. The philosopher Thales of
Miletus (7th and 6th centuries BCE),
dubbed "the Father of Science" for refusing
to accept various supernatural, religious or
mythological explanations for natural
phenomena, proclaimed that every event
had a natural cause.[1] Thales also made
advancements in 580 BCE by suggesting
that water is the basic element,
experimenting with the attraction between
magnets and rubbed amber and
formulating the first recorded
cosmologies. Anaximander, famous for his
proto-evolutionary theory, disputed Thales'
ideas and proposed that rather than water,
a substance called apeiron was the
building block of all matter. Around 500
BCE, Heraclitus proposed that the only
basic law governing the Universe was the
principle of change and that nothing
remains in the same state indefinitely.
Along with his contemporary Parmenides
were among the first scholars in ancient
physics to contemplate on the role of time
in the universe, a key concept that is still
an issue in modern physics.

Aristotle
(384–322 BCE)

During the classical period in Greece (6th,

5th and 4th centuries BCE) and in
Hellenistic times, natural philosophy
slowly developed into an exciting and
contentious field of study. Aristotle (Greek:
Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384–322 BCE),
a student of Plato, promoted the concept
that observation of physical phenomena
could ultimately lead to the discovery of
the natural laws governing them.
Aristotle's writings cover physics,
metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic,
rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government,
ethics, biology and zoology. He wrote the
first work which refers to that line of study
as "Physics" – in the 4th century BCE,
Aristotle founded the system known as
Aristotelian physics. He attempted to
explain ideas such as motion (and gravity)
with the theory of four elements. Aristotle
believed that all matter was made up of
aether, or some combination of four
elements: earth, water, air, and fire.
According to Aristotle, these four
terrestrial elements are capable of inter-
transformation and move toward their
natural place, so a stone falls downward
toward the center of the cosmos, but
flames rise upward toward the
circumference. Eventually, Aristotelian
physics became enormously popular for
many centuries in Europe, informing the
scientific and scholastic developments of
the Middle Ages. It remained the
mainstream scientific paradigm in Europe
until the time of Galileo Galilei and Isaac
Newton.

Early in Classical Greece, knowledge that

the Earth is spherical ("round") was
common. Around 240 BCE, as the result of
a seminal experiment, Eratosthenes (276–
194 BCE) accurately estimated its
circumference. In contrast to Aristotle's
geocentric views, Aristarchus of Samos
(Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος; c. 310 – c. 230 BCE)
presented an explicit argument for a
heliocentric model of the Solar System, i.e.
for placing the Sun, not the Earth, at its
centre. Seleucus of Seleucia, a follower of
Aristarchus' heliocentric theory, stated that
the Earth rotated around its own axis,
which, in turn, revolved around the Sun.
Though the arguments he used were lost,
Plutarch stated that Seleucus was the first
to prove the heliocentric system through
reasoning.

The ancient Greek

mathematician Archimedes,
famous for his ideas regarding
fluid mechanics and buoyancy.

In the 3rd century BCE, the Greek

mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse
(Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης (287–212 BCE) –
generally considered to be the greatest
mathematician of antiquity and one of the
greatest of all time – laid the foundations
of hydrostatics, statics and calculated the
underlying mathematics of the lever. A
leading scientist of classical antiquity,
Archimedes also developed elaborate
systems of pulleys to move large objects
with a minimum of effort. The Archimedes'
screw underpins modern
hydroengineering, and his machines of war
helped to hold back the armies of Rome in
the First Punic War. Archimedes even tore
apart the arguments of Aristotle and his
metaphysics, pointing out that it was
impossible to separate mathematics and
nature and proved it by converting
mathematical theories into practical
inventions. Furthermore, in his work On
Floating Bodies, around 250 BCE,
Archimedes developed the law of
buoyancy, also known as Archimedes'
principle. In mathematics, Archimedes
used the method of exhaustion to
calculate the area under the arc of a
parabola with the summation of an infinite
series, and gave a remarkably accurate
approximation of pi. He also defined the
spiral bearing his name, formulae for the
volumes of surfaces of revolution and an
ingenious system for expressing very large
numbers. He also developed the principles
of equilibrium states and centers of
gravity, ideas that would influence the well
known scholars, Galileo, and Newton.

Hipparchus (190–120 BCE), focusing on

astronomy and mathematics, used
sophisticated geometrical techniques to
map the motion of the stars and planets,
even predicting the times that Solar
eclipses would happen. He added
calculations of the distance of the Sun and
Moon from the Earth, based upon his
improvements to the observational
instruments used at that time. Another of
the most famous of the early physicists
was Ptolemy (90–168 CE), one of the
leading minds during the time of the
Roman Empire. Ptolemy was the author of
several scientific treatises, at least three of
which were of continuing importance to
later Islamic and European science. The
first is the astronomical treatise now
known as the Almagest (in Greek, Ἡ
Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, "The Great Treatise",
originally Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις,
"Mathematical Treatise"). The second is
the Geography, which is a thorough
discussion of the geographic knowledge
of the Greco-Roman world.

Much of the accumulated knowledge of

the ancient world was lost. Even of the
works of the better known thinkers, few
fragments survived. Although he wrote at
least fourteen books, almost nothing of
Hipparchus' direct work survived. Of the
150 reputed Aristotelian works, only 30
exist, and some of those are "little more
than lecture notes".

India and China

The Hindu-Arabic numeral system.

The inscriptions on the edicts of
Ashoka (3rd century BCE) display this
number system being used by the
Imperial Mauryas.
Important physical and mathematical
traditions also existed in ancient Chinese
and Indian sciences.

Star maps by the 11th-century Chinese

polymath Su Song are the oldest known
woodblock-printed star maps to have
survived to the present day. This example,
dated 1092,[note 1] employs the cylindrical
equirectangular projection.[2]

In Indian philosophy, Maharishi Kanada

was the first to systematically develop a
theory of atomism around 200 BCE[3]
though some authors have allotted him an
earlier era in the 6th century BCE.[4][5] It
was further elaborated by the Buddhist
atomists Dharmakirti and Dignāga during
the 1st millennium CE.[6] Pakudha
Kaccayana, a 6th-century BCE Indian
philosopher and contemporary of
Gautama Buddha, had also propounded
ideas about the atomic constitution of the
material world. These philosophers
believed that other elements (except
ether) were physically palpable and hence
comprised minuscule particles of matter.
The last minuscule particle of matter that
could not be subdivided further was
termed Parmanu. These philosophers
considered the atom to be indestructible
and hence eternal. The Buddhists thought
atoms to be minute objects unable to be
seen to the naked eye that come into being
and vanish in an instant. The Vaisheshika
school of philosophers believed that an
atom was a mere point in space. It was
also first to depict relations between
motion and force applied. Indian theories
about the atom are greatly abstract and
enmeshed in philosophy as they were
based on logic and not on personal
experience or experimentation. In Indian
astronomy, Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya (499
CE) proposed the Earth's rotation, while
Nilakantha Somayaji (1444–1544) of the
Kerala school of astronomy and
mathematics proposed a semi-heliocentric
model resembling the Tychonic system.
The study of magnetism in Ancient China
dates back to the 4th century BCE. (in the
Book of the Devil Valley Master),[7] A main
contributor to this field was Shen Kuo
(1031–1095), a polymath and statesman
who was the first to describe the
magnetic-needle compass used for
navigation, as well as establishing the
concept of true north. In optics, Shen Kuo
independently developed a camera
obscura.[8]
Islamic world

Ibn al-Haytham
(c. 965–1040).

In the 7th to 15th centuries, scientific

progress occurred in the Muslim world.
Many classic works in Indian, Assyrian,
Sassanian (Persian) and Greek, including
the works of Aristotle, were translated into
Arabic.[9] Important contributions were
made by Ibn al-Haytham (965–1040), an
Arab scientist, considered to be a founder
of modern optics. Ptolemy and Aristotle
theorised that light either shone from the
eye to illuminate objects or that "forms"
emanated from objects themselves,
whereas al-Haytham (known by the Latin
name "Alhazen") suggested that light
travels to the eye in rays from different
points on an object. The works of Ibn al-
Haytham and al-Biruni (973–1050), a
Persian scientist, eventually passed on to
Western Europe where they were studied
by scholars such as Roger Bacon and
Vitello.[10]

Ibn al-Haytham used controlled

experiments in his work on optics,
although to what extent it differed from
Ptolemy is up to debate .[11][12] Arabic
mechanics like Bīrūnī and Al-Khazini
developed sophisticated "science of
weight", carrying out measurements of
specific weights and volumes[13]

Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), known as "Avicenna",

was a polymath from Bukhara (in present-
day Uzbekistan) responsible for important
contributions to physics, optics,
philosophy and medicine. He published his
theory of motion in Book of Healing (1020),
where he argued that an impetus is
imparted to a projectile by the thrower, and
believed that it was a temporary virtue that
would decline even in a vacuum. He
viewed it as persistent, requiring external
forces such as air resistance to dissipate
it.[14][15][16] Ibn Sina made a distinction
between 'force' and 'inclination' (called
"mayl"), and argued that an object gained
mayl when the object is in opposition to its
natural motion. He concluded that
continuation of motion is attributed to the
inclination that is transferred to the object,
and that object will be in motion until the
mayl is spent. He also claimed that
projectile in a vacuum would not stop
unless it is acted upon. This conception of
motion is consistent with Newton's first
law of motion, inertia, which states that an
object in motion will stay in motion unless
it is acted on by an external force.[14] This
idea which dissented from the Aristotelian
view was later described as "impetus" by
John Buridan, who was influenced by Ibn
Sina's Book of Healing.[17]

A page from al-Khwārizmī's

Algebra.

Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi

(c. 1080 – c. 1165) adopted and modified
Ibn Sina's theory on projectile motion. In
his Kitab al-Mu'tabar, Abu'l-Barakat stated
that the mover imparts a violent inclination
(mayl qasri) on the moved and that this
diminishes as the moving object distances
itself from the mover.[18] He also proposed
an explanation of the acceleration of
falling bodies by the accumulation of
successive increments of power with
successive increments of velocity.[19]
According to Shlomo Pines, al-Baghdaadi's
theory of motion was "the oldest negation
of Aristotle's fundamental dynamic law
[namely, that a constant force produces a
uniform motion], [and is thus an]
anticipation in a vague fashion of the
fundamental law of classical mechanics
[namely, that a force applied continuously
produces acceleration]."[20] Jean Buridan
and Albert of Saxony later referred to
Abu'l-Barakat in explaining that the
acceleration of a falling body is a result of
its increasing impetus.[18]

Ibn Bajjah (c. 1085 – 1138), known as

"Avempace" in Europe, proposed that for
every force there is always a reaction
force. Ibn Bajjah was a critic of Ptolemy
and he worked on creating a new theory of
velocity to replace the one theorized by
Aristotle. Two future philosophers
supported the theories Avempace created,
known as Avempacean dynamics. These
philosophers were Thomas Aquinas, a
Catholic priest, and John Duns Scotus.[21]
Galileo went on to adopt Avempace's
formula "that the velocity of a given object
is the difference of the motive power of
that object and the resistance of the
medium of motion".[21]

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274), a Persian

astronomer and mathematician who died
in Baghdad introduced the Tusi couple.
Copernicus later drew heavily on the work
of al-Din al-Tusi and his students, but
without acknowledgment.[22]
Medieval Europe

Awareness of ancient works re-entered the

West through translations from Arabic to
Latin. Their re-introduction, combined with
Judeo-Islamic theological commentaries,
had a great influence on Medieval
philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas.
Scholastic European scholars, who sought
to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient
classical philosophers with Christian
theology, proclaimed Aristotle the greatest
thinker of the ancient world. In cases
where they didn't directly contradict the
Bible, Aristotelian physics became the
foundation for the physical explanations of
the European Churches. Quantification
became a core element of medieval
physics.[23]

Based on Aristotelian physics, Scholastic

physics described things as moving
according to their essential nature.
Celestial objects were described as
moving in circles, because perfect circular
motion was considered an innate property
of objects that existed in the uncorrupted
realm of the celestial spheres. The theory
of impetus, the ancestor to the concepts
of inertia and momentum, was developed
along similar lines by medieval
philosophers such as John Philoponus
and Jean Buridan. Motions below the lunar
sphere were seen as imperfect, and thus
could not be expected to exhibit
consistent motion. More idealized motion
in the "sublunary" realm could only be
achieved through artifice, and prior to the
17th century, many did not view artificial
experiments as a valid means of learning
about the natural world. Physical
explanations in the sublunary realm
revolved around tendencies. Stones
contained the element earth, and earthly
objects tended to move in a straight line
toward the centre of the earth (and the
universe in the Aristotelian geocentric
view) unless otherwise prevented from
doing so.[24]

Scientific Revolution
During the 16th and 17th centuries, a large
advancement of scientific progress known
as the Scientific Revolution took place in
Europe. Dissatisfaction with older
philosophical approaches had begun
earlier and had produced other changes in
society, such as the Protestant
Reformation, but the revolution in science
began when natural philosophers began to
mount a sustained attack on the
Scholastic philosophical programme and
supposed that mathematical descriptive
schemes adopted from such fields as
mechanics and astronomy could actually
yield universally valid characterizations of
motion and other concepts.

Nicolaus Copernicus

The Polish astronomer Nicolaus

Copernicus (1473–1543) is
remembered for his development
of a heliocentric model of the
Solar System.

A breakthrough in astronomy was made by

Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473–1543) when, in 1543, he gave
strong arguments for the heliocentric
model of the Solar System, ostensibly as a
means to render tables charting planetary
motion more accurate and to simplify their
production. In heliocentric models of the
Solar system, the Earth orbits the Sun
along with other bodies in Earth's galaxy, a
contradiction according to the Greek-
Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (2nd century
CE; see above), whose system placed the
Earth at the center of the Universe and had
been accepted for over 1,400 years. The
Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos
(c. 310 – c. 230 BCE) had suggested that
the Earth revolves around the Sun, but
Copernicus' reasoning led to lasting
general acceptance of this "revolutionary"
idea. Copernicus' book presenting the
theory (De revolutionibus orbium
coelestium, "On the Revolutions of the
Celestial Spheres") was published just
before his death in 1543 and, as it is now
generally considered to mark the
beginning of modern astronomy, is also
considered to mark the beginning of the
Scientific Revolution. Copernicus' new
perspective, along with the accurate
observations made by Tycho Brahe,
enabled German astronomer Johannes
Kepler (1571–1630) to formulate his laws
regarding planetary motion that remain in
use today.
Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei, early

proponent of the modern
scientific worldview and
method
(1564–1642)

The Italian mathematician, astronomer,

and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
was famous for his support for
Copernicanism, his astronomical
discoveries, empirical experiments and his
improvement of the telescope. As a
mathematician, Galileo's role in the
university culture of his era was
subordinated to the three major topics of
study: law, medicine, and theology (which
was closely allied to philosophy). Galileo,
however, felt that the descriptive content
of the technical disciplines warranted
philosophical interest, particularly because
mathematical analysis of astronomical
observations – notably, Copernicus'
analysis of the relative motions of the Sun,
Earth, Moon, and planets – indicated that
philosophers' statements about the nature
of the universe could be shown to be in
error. Galileo also performed mechanical
experiments, insisting that motion itself –
regardless of whether it was produced
"naturally" or "artificially" (i.e.
deliberately) – had universally consistent
characteristics that could be described
mathematically.

Galileo's early studies at the University of

Pisa were in medicine, but he was soon
drawn to mathematics and physics. At 19,
he discovered (and, subsequently, verified)
the isochronal nature of the pendulum
when, using his pulse, he timed the
oscillations of a swinging lamp in Pisa's
cathedral and found that it remained the
same for each swing regardless of the
swing's amplitude. He soon became
known through his invention of a
hydrostatic balance and for his treatise on
the center of gravity of solid bodies. While
teaching at the University of Pisa (1589–
92), he initiated his experiments
concerning the laws of bodies in motion
that brought results so contradictory to the
accepted teachings of Aristotle that strong
antagonism was aroused. He found that
bodies do not fall with velocities
proportional to their weights. The famous
story in which Galileo is said to have
dropped weights from the Leaning Tower
of Pisa is apocryphal, but he did find that
the path of a projectile is a parabola and is
credited with conclusions that anticipated
Newton's laws of motion (e.g. the notion of
inertia). Among these is what is now
called Galilean relativity, the first precisely
formulated statement about properties of
space and time outside three-dimensional
geometry.

A composite montage comparing

Jupiter (lefthand side) and its four
Galilean moons (top to bottom: Io,
Europa, Ganymede, Callisto).

Galileo has been called the "father of

modern observational astronomy",[25] the
"father of modern physics", the "father of
science",[26] and "the father of modern
science".[27] According to Stephen
Hawking, "Galileo, perhaps more than any
other single person, was responsible for
the birth of modern science."[28] As
religious orthodoxy decreed a geocentric
or Tychonic understanding of the Solar
system, Galileo's support for heliocentrism
provoked controversy and he was tried by
the Inquisition. Found "vehemently
suspect of heresy", he was forced to
recant and spent the rest of his life under
house arrest.

The contributions that Galileo made to

observational astronomy include the
telescopic confirmation of the phases of
Venus; his discovery, in 1609, of Jupiter's
four largest moons (subsequently given
the collective name of the "Galilean
moons"); and the observation and analysis
of sunspots. Galileo also pursued applied
science and technology, inventing, among
other instruments, a military compass. His
discovery of the Jovian moons was
published in 1610 and enabled him to
obtain the position of mathematician and
philosopher to the Medici court. As such,
he was expected to engage in debates
with philosophers in the Aristotelian
tradition and received a large audience for
his own publications such as the
Discourses and Mathematical
Demonstrations Concerning Two New
Sciences (published abroad following his
arrest for the publication of Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems)
and The Assayer.[29][30] Galileo's interest in
experimenting with and formulating
mathematical descriptions of motion
established experimentation as an integral
part of natural philosophy. This tradition,
combining with the non-mathematical
emphasis on the collection of
"experimental histories" by philosophical
reformists such as William Gilbert and
Francis Bacon, drew a significant following
in the years leading up to and following
Galileo's death, including Evangelista
Torricelli and the participants in the
Accademia del Cimento in Italy; Marin
Mersenne and Blaise Pascal in France;
Christiaan Huygens in the Netherlands;
and Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle in
England.

René Descartes

René Descartes
(1596–1650)

The French philosopher René Descartes

(1596–1650) was well-connected to, and
influential within, the experimental
philosophy networks of the day. Descartes
had a more ambitious agenda, however,
which was geared toward replacing the
Scholastic philosophical tradition
altogether. Questioning the reality
interpreted through the senses, Descartes
sought to re-establish philosophical
explanatory schemes by reducing all
perceived phenomena to being attributable
to the motion of an invisible sea of
"corpuscles". (Notably, he reserved human
thought and God from his scheme, holding
these to be separate from the physical
universe). In proposing this philosophical
framework, Descartes supposed that
different kinds of motion, such as that of
planets versus that of terrestrial objects,
were not fundamentally different, but were
merely different manifestations of an
endless chain of corpuscular motions
obeying universal principles. Particularly
influential were his explanations for
circular astronomical motions in terms of
the vortex motion of corpuscles in space
(Descartes argued, in accord with the
beliefs, if not the methods, of the
Scholastics, that a vacuum could not
exist), and his explanation of gravity in
terms of corpuscles pushing objects
downward.[31][32][33]
Descartes, like Galileo, was convinced of
the importance of mathematical
explanation, and he and his followers were
key figures in the development of
mathematics and geometry in the 17th
century. Cartesian mathematical
descriptions of motion held that all
mathematical formulations had to be
justifiable in terms of direct physical
action, a position held by Huygens and the
German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz,
who, while following in the Cartesian
tradition, developed his own philosophical
alternative to Scholasticism, which he
outlined in his 1714 work, the Monadology.
Descartes has been dubbed the "Father of
Modern Philosophy", and much
subsequent Western philosophy is a
response to his writings, which are studied
closely to this day. In particular, his
Meditations on First Philosophy continues
to be a standard text at most university
philosophy departments. Descartes'
influence in mathematics is equally
apparent; the Cartesian coordinate
system — allowing algebraic equations to
be expressed as geometric shapes in a
two-dimensional coordinate system — was
named after him. He is credited as the
father of analytical geometry, the bridge
between algebra and geometry, important
to the discovery of calculus and analysis.
Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens
(1629–1695)

The Dutch physicist, mathematician,

astronomer and inventor Christiaan
Huygens (1629–1695) was the leading
scientist in Europe between Galileo and
Newton. Huygens came from a family of
nobility that had an important position in
the Dutch society of the 17th century; a
time in which the Dutch Republic
flourished economically and culturally.
This period — roughly between 1588 and
1702 — of the history of the Netherlands is
also referred to as the Dutch Golden Age,
an era during the Scientific Revolution
when Dutch science was among the most
acclaimed in Europe. At this time,
intellectuals and scientists like René
Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Pierre Bayle,
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, John Locke
and Hugo Grotius resided in the
Netherlands. It was in this intellectual
environment where Christiaan Huygens
grew up. Christiaan's father, Constantijn
Huygens, was, apart from an important
poet, the secretary and diplomat for the
Princes of Orange. He knew many
scientists of his time because of his
contacts and intellectual interests,
including René Descartes and Marin
Mersenne, and it was because of these
contacts that Christiaan Huygens became
aware of their work. Especially Descartes,
whose mechanistic philosophy was going
to have a huge influence on Huygens' own
work. Descartes was later impressed by
the skills Christiaan Huygens showed in
geometry, as was Mersenne, who
christened him "the new Archimedes"
(which led Constantijn to refer to his son
as "my little Archimedes").
A child prodigy, Huygens began his
correspondence with Marin Mersenne
when he was 17 years old. Huygens
became interested in games of chance
when he encountered the work of Fermat,
Blaise Pascal and Girard Desargues. It was
Blaise Pascal who encourages him to
write Van Rekeningh in Spelen van Gluck,
which Frans van Schooten translated and
published as De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae in
1657. The book is the earliest known
scientific treatment of the subject, and at
the time the most coherent presentation of
a mathematical approach to games of
chance. Two years later Huygens derived
geometrically the now standard formulae
in classical mechanics for the centripetal-
and centrifugal force in his work De vi
Centrifuga (1659). Around the same time
Huygens' research in horology resulted in
the invention of the pendulum clock; a
breakthrough in timekeeping and the most
accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years.
The theoretical research of the way the
pendulum works eventually led to the
publication of one of his most important
achievements: the Horologium
Oscillatorium. This work was published in
1673 and became one of the three most
important 17th century works on
mechanics (the other two being Galileo’s
Discourses and Mathematical
Demonstrations Relating to Two New
Sciences (1638) and Newton’s Philosophiæ
Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)[34]).
The Horologium Oscillatorium is the first
modern treatise in which a physical
problem (the accelerated motion of a
falling body) is idealized by a set of
parameters then analyzed mathematically
and constitutes one of the seminal works
of applied mathematics.[35][36] It is for this
reason, Huygens has been called the first
theoretical physicist and one of the
founders of modern mathematical
physics.[37][38] Huygens' Horologium
Oscillatorium had a tremendous influence
on the history of physics, especially on the
work of Isaac Newton, who greatly
admired the work. For instance, the laws
Huygens described in the Horologium
Oscillatorium are structurally the same as
Newton's first two laws of motion.[39]

Five years after the publication of his

Horologium Oscillatorium, Huygens
described his wave theory of light. Though
proposed in 1678, it wasn't published until
1690 in his Traité de la Lumière. His
mathematical theory of light was initially
rejected in favour of Newton's corpuscular
theory of light, until Augustin-Jean Fresnel
adopted Huygens' principle to give a
complete explanation of the rectilinear
propagation and diffraction effects of light
in 1821. Today this principle is known as
the Huygens–Fresnel principle. As an
astronomer, Huygens began grinding
lenses with his brother Constantijn jr. to
build telescopes for astronomical
research. He was the first to identify the
rings of Saturn as "a thin, flat ring, nowhere
touching, and inclined to the ecliptic," and
discovered the first of Saturn's moons,
Titan, using a refracting telescope.

Apart from the many important

discoveries Huygens made in physics and
astronomy, and his inventions of ingenious
devices, he was also the first who brought
mathematical rigor to the description of
physical phenomena. Because of this, and
the fact that he developed institutional
frameworks for scientific research on the
continent, he has been referred to as "the
leading actor in 'the making of science in
Europe' "[40]

Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton

(1642–1727)
The late 17th and early 18th centuries saw
the achievements of Cambridge University
physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac
Newton (1642-1727). Newton, a fellow of
the Royal Society of England, combined
his own discoveries in mechanics and
astronomy to earlier ones to create a
single system for describing the workings
of the universe. Newton formulated three
laws of motion which formulated the
relationship between motion and objects
and also the law of universal gravitation,
the latter of which could be used to
explain the behavior not only of falling
bodies on the earth but also planets and
other celestial bodies. To arrive at his
results, Newton invented one form of an
entirely new branch of mathematics:
calculus (also invented independently by
Gottfried Leibniz), which was to become
an essential tool in much of the later
development in most branches of physics.
Newton's findings were set forth in his
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia
Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy"), the publication of
which in 1687 marked the beginning of the
modern period of mechanics and
astronomy.

Newton was able to refute the Cartesian

mechanical tradition that all motions
should be explained with respect to the
immediate force exerted by corpuscles.
Using his three laws of motion and law of
universal gravitation, Newton removed the
idea that objects followed paths
determined by natural shapes and instead
demonstrated that not only regularly
observed paths, but all the future motions
of any body could be deduced
mathematically based on knowledge of
their existing motion, their mass, and the
forces acting upon them. However,
observed celestial motions did not
precisely conform to a Newtonian
treatment, and Newton, who was also
deeply interested in theology, imagined
that God intervened to ensure the
continued stability of the solar system.

Gottfried Leibniz
(1646–1716)

Newton's principles (but not his

mathematical treatments) proved
controversial with Continental
philosophers, who found his lack of
metaphysical explanation for movement
and gravitation philosophically
unacceptable. Beginning around 1700, a
bitter rift opened between the Continental
and British philosophical traditions, which
were stoked by heated, ongoing, and
viciously personal disputes between the
followers of Newton and Leibniz
concerning priority over the analytical
techniques of calculus, which each had
developed independently. Initially, the
Cartesian and Leibnizian traditions
prevailed on the Continent (leading to the
dominance of the Leibnizian calculus
notation everywhere except Britain).
Newton himself remained privately
disturbed at the lack of a philosophical
understanding of gravitation while
insisting in his writings that none was
necessary to infer its reality. As the 18th
century progressed, Continental natural
philosophers increasingly accepted the
Newtonians' willingness to forgo
ontological metaphysical explanations for
mathematically described
motions.[41][42][43]

Newton built the first functioning reflecting

telescope[44] and developed a theory of
color, published in Opticks, based on the
observation that a prism decomposes
white light into the many colours forming
the visible spectrum. While Newton
explained light as being composed of tiny
particles, a rival theory of light which
explained its behavior in terms of waves
was presented in 1690 by Christiaan
Huygens. However, the belief in the
mechanistic philosophy coupled with
Newton's reputation meant that the wave
theory saw relatively little support until the
19th century. Newton also formulated an
empirical law of cooling, studied the speed
of sound, investigated power series,
demonstrated the generalised binomial
theorem and developed a method for
approximating the roots of a function. His
work on infinite series was inspired by
Simon Stevin's decimals.[45] Most
importantly, Newton showed that the
motions of objects on Earth and of
celestial bodies are governed by the same
set of natural laws, which were neither
capricious nor malevolent. By
demonstrating the consistency between
Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his
own theory of gravitation, Newton also
removed the last doubts about
heliocentrism. By bringing together all the
ideas set forth during the Scientific
Revolution, Newton effectively established
the foundation for modern society in
mathematics and science.

Other achievements

Other branches of physics also received

attention during the period of the Scientific
Revolution. William Gilbert, court physician
to Queen Elizabeth I, published an
important work on magnetism in 1600,
describing how the earth itself behaves
like a giant magnet. Robert Boyle (1627–
91) studied the behavior of gases
enclosed in a chamber and formulated the
gas law named for him; he also
contributed to physiology and to the
founding of modern chemistry. Another
important factor in the scientific revolution
was the rise of learned societies and
academies in various countries. The
earliest of these were in Italy and Germany
and were short-lived. More influential were
the Royal Society of England (1660) and
the Academy of Sciences in France (1666).
The former was a private institution in
London and included such scientists as
John Wallis, William Brouncker, Thomas
Sydenham, John Mayow, and Christopher
Wren (who contributed not only to
architecture but also to astronomy and
anatomy); the latter, in Paris, was a
government institution and included as a
foreign member the Dutchman Huygens.
In the 18th century, important royal
academies were established at Berlin
(1700) and at St. Petersburg (1724). The
societies and academies provided the
principal opportunities for the publication
and discussion of scientific results during
and after the scientific revolution. In 1690,
James Bernoulli showed that the cycloid is
the solution to the tautochrone problem;
and the following year, in 1691, Johann
Bernoulli showed that a chain freely
suspended from two points will form a
catenary, the curve with the lowest
possible center of gravity available to any
chain hung between two fixed points. He
then showed, in 1696, that the cycloid is
the solution to the brachistochrone
problem.
Early thermodynamics

A precursor of the engine was designed by

the German scientist Otto von Guericke
who, in 1650, designed and built the
world's first vacuum pump to create a
vacuum as demonstrated in the
Magdeburg hemispheres experiment. He
was driven to make a vacuum to disprove
Aristotle's long-held supposition that
'Nature abhors a vacuum'. Shortly
thereafter, Irish physicist and chemist
Boyle had learned of Guericke's designs
and in 1656, in coordination with English
scientist Robert Hooke, built an air pump.
Using this pump, Boyle and Hooke noticed
the pressure-volume correlation for a gas:
PV = k, where P is pressure, V is volume
and k is a constant: this relationship is
known as Boyle's Law. In that time, air was
assumed to be a system of motionless
particles, and not interpreted as a system
of moving molecules. The concept of
thermal motion came two centuries later.
Therefore, Boyle's publication in 1660
speaks about a mechanical concept: the
air spring.[46] Later, after the invention of
the thermometer, the property temperature
could be quantified. This tool gave Gay-
Lussac the opportunity to derive his law,
which led shortly later to the ideal gas law.
But, already before the establishment of
the ideal gas law, an associate of Boyle's
named Denis Papin built in 1679 a bone
digester, which is a closed vessel with a
tightly fitting lid that confines steam until a
high pressure is generated.

Later designs implemented a steam

release valve to keep the machine from
exploding. By watching the valve
rhythmically move up and down, Papin
conceived of the idea of a piston and
cylinder engine. He did not however follow
through with his design. Nevertheless, in
1697, based on Papin's designs, engineer
Thomas Savery built the first engine.
Although these early engines were crude
and inefficient, they attracted the attention
of the leading scientists of the time.
Hence, prior to 1698 and the invention of
the Savery Engine, horses were used to
power pulleys, attached to buckets, which
lifted water out of flooded salt mines in
England. In the years to follow, more
variations of steam engines were built,
such as the Newcomen Engine, and later
the Watt Engine. In time, these early
engines would eventually be utilized in
place of horses. Thus, each engine began
to be associated with a certain amount of
"horse power" depending upon how many
horses it had replaced. The main problem
with these first engines was that they were
slow and clumsy, converting less than 2%
of the input fuel into useful work. In other
words, large quantities of coal (or wood)
had to be burned to yield only a small
fraction of work output. Hence the need
for a new science of engine dynamics was
born.

18th-century developments

Alessandro Volta
(1745–1827)
During the 18th century, the mechanics
founded by Newton was developed by
several scientists as more
mathematicians learned calculus and
elaborated upon its initial formulation. The
application of mathematical analysis to
problems of motion was known as rational
mechanics, or mixed mathematics (and
was later termed classical mechanics).
Mechanics

Daniel Bernoulli
(1700–1782)

In 1714, Brook Taylor derived the

fundamental frequency of a stretched
vibrating string in terms of its tension and
mass per unit length by solving a
differential equation. The Swiss
mathematician Daniel Bernoulli (1700–
1782) made important mathematical
studies of the behavior of gases,
anticipating the kinetic theory of gases
developed more than a century later, and
has been referred to as the first
mathematical physicist.[47] In 1733, Daniel
Bernoulli derived the fundamental
frequency and harmonics of a hanging
chain by solving a differential equation. In
1734, Bernoulli solved the differential
equation for the vibrations of an elastic
bar clamped at one end. Bernoulli's
treatment of fluid dynamics and his
examination of fluid flow was introduced
in his 1738 work Hydrodynamica.
Rational mechanics dealt primarily with
the development of elaborate
mathematical treatments of observed
motions, using Newtonian principles as a
basis, and emphasized improving the
tractability of complex calculations and
developing of legitimate means of
analytical approximation. A representative
contemporary textbook was published by
Johann Baptiste Horvath. By the end of
the century analytical treatments were
rigorous enough to verify the stability of
the Solar System solely on the basis of
Newton's laws without reference to divine
intervention—even as deterministic
treatments of systems as simple as the
three body problem in gravitation
remained intractable.[48] In 1705, Edmond
Halley predicted the periodicity of Halley's
Comet, William Herschel discovered
Uranus in 1781, and Henry Cavendish
measured the gravitational constant and
determined the mass of the Earth in 1798.
In 1783, John Michell suggested that
some objects might be so massive that
not even light could escape from them.

In 1739, Leonhard Euler solved the

ordinary differential equation for a forced
harmonic oscillator and noticed the
resonance phenomenon. In 1742, Colin
Maclaurin discovered his uniformly
rotating self-gravitating spheroids. In 1742,
Benjamin Robins published his New
Principles in Gunnery, establishing the
science of aerodynamics. British work,
carried on by mathematicians such as
Taylor and Maclaurin, fell behind
Continental developments as the century
progressed. Meanwhile, work flourished at
scientific academies on the Continent, led
by such mathematicians as Bernoulli and
Euler, as well as Joseph-Louis Lagrange,
Pierre-Simon Laplace, and Adrien-Marie
Legendre. In 1743, Jean le Rond
d'Alembert published his Traité de
dynamique, in which he introduced the
concept of generalized forces for
accelerating systems and systems with
constraints, and applied the new idea of
virtual work to solve dynamical problem,
now known as D'Alembert's principle, as a
rival to Newton's second law of motion. In
1747, Pierre Louis Maupertuis applied
minimum principles to mechanics. In
1759, Euler solved the partial differential
equation for the vibration of a rectangular
drum. In 1764, Euler examined the partial
differential equation for the vibration of a
circular drum and found one of the Bessel
function solutions. In 1776, John Smeaton
published a paper on experiments relating
power, work, momentum and kinetic
energy, and supporting the conservation of
energy. In 1788, Lagrange presented his
equations of motion in Mécanique
analytique, in which the whole of
mechanics was organized around the
principle of virtual work. In 1789, Antoine
Lavoisier stated the law of conservation of
mass. The rational mechanics developed
in the 18th century received expositions in
both Lagrange's Mécanique analytique and
Laplace's Traité de mécanique céleste
(1799–1825).

Thermodynamics

During the 18th century, thermodynamics

was developed through the theories of
weightless "imponderable fluids", such as
heat ("caloric"), electricity, and phlogiston
(which was rapidly overthrown as a
concept following Lavoisier's identification
of oxygen gas late in the century).
Assuming that these concepts were real
fluids, their flow could be traced through a
mechanical apparatus or chemical
reactions. This tradition of
experimentation led to the development of
new kinds of experimental apparatus, such
as the Leyden Jar; and new kinds of
measuring instruments, such as the
calorimeter, and improved versions of old
ones, such as the thermometer.
Experiments also produced new concepts,
such as the University of Glasgow
experimenter Joseph Black's notion of
latent heat and Philadelphia intellectual
Benjamin Franklin's characterization of
electrical fluid as flowing between places
of excess and deficit (a concept later
reinterpreted in terms of positive and
negative charges). Franklin also showed
that lightning is electricity in 1752.

The accepted theory of heat in the 18th

century viewed it as a kind of fluid, called
caloric; although this theory was later
shown to be erroneous, a number of
scientists adhering to it nevertheless
made important discoveries useful in
developing the modern theory, including
Joseph Black (1728–99) and Henry
Cavendish (1731–1810). Opposed to this
caloric theory, which had been developed
mainly by the chemists, was the less
accepted theory dating from Newton's
time that heat is due to the motions of the
particles of a substance. This mechanical
theory gained support in 1798 from the
cannon-boring experiments of Count
Rumford (Benjamin Thompson), who
found a direct relationship between heat
and mechanical energy.

While it was recognized early in the 18th

century that finding absolute theories of
electrostatic and magnetic force akin to
Newton's principles of motion would be an
important achievement, none were
forthcoming. This impossibility only slowly
disappeared as experimental practice
became more widespread and more
refined in the early years of the 19th
century in places such as the newly
established Royal Institution in London.
Meanwhile, the analytical methods of
rational mechanics began to be applied to
experimental phenomena, most
influentially with the French
mathematician Joseph Fourier's analytical
treatment of the flow of heat, as published
in 1822.[49][50][51] Joseph Priestley
proposed an electrical inverse-square law
in 1767, and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
introduced the inverse-square law of
electrostatics in 1798.

At the end of the century, the members of

the French Academy of Sciences had
attained clear dominance in the
field.[43][52][53][54] At the same time, the
experimental tradition established by
Galileo and his followers persisted. The
Royal Society and the French Academy of
Sciences were major centers for the
performance and reporting of
experimental work. Experiments in
mechanics, optics, magnetism, static
electricity, chemistry, and physiology were
not clearly distinguished from each other
during the 18th century, but significant
differences in explanatory schemes and,
thus, experiment design were emerging.
Chemical experimenters, for instance,
defied attempts to enforce a scheme of
abstract Newtonian forces onto chemical
affiliations, and instead focused on the
isolation and classification of chemical
substances and reactions.[55]
19th century

Mechanics

In 1821, William Hamilton began his

analysis of Hamilton's characteristic
function. In 1835, he stated Hamilton's
canonical equations of motion.

In 1813, Peter Ewart supported the idea of

the conservation of energy in his paper On
the measure of moving force. In 1829,
Gaspard Coriolis introduced the terms of
work (force times distance) and kinetic
energy with the meanings they have today.
In 1841, Julius Robert von Mayer, an
amateur scientist, wrote a paper on the
conservation of energy, although his lack
of academic training led to its rejection. In
1847, Hermann von Helmholtz formally
stated the law of conservation of energy.

Electromagnetism

Michael Faraday
(1791–1867)

In 1800, Alessandro Volta invented the

electric battery (known as the voltaic pile)
and thus improved the way electric
currents could also be studied. A year
later, Thomas Young demonstrated the
wave nature of light—which received
strong experimental support from the
work of Augustin-Jean Fresnel—and the
principle of interference. In 1820, Hans
Christian Ørsted found that a current-
carrying conductor gives rise to a
magnetic force surrounding it, and within a
week after Ørsted's discovery reached
France, André-Marie Ampère discovered
that two parallel electric currents will exert
forces on each other. In 1821, Michael
Faraday built an electricity-powered motor,
while Georg Ohm stated his law of
electrical resistance in 1826, expressing
the relationship between voltage, current,
and resistance in an electric circuit.

In 1831, Faraday (and independently

Joseph Henry) discovered the reverse
effect, the production of an electric
potential or current through magnetism –
known as electromagnetic induction; these
two discoveries are the basis of the
electric motor and the electric generator,
respectively.
Laws of thermodynamics

William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)

(1824–1907)

In the 19th century, the connection

between heat and mechanical energy was
established quantitatively by Julius Robert
von Mayer and James Prescott Joule, who
measured the mechanical equivalent of
heat in the 1840s. In 1849, Joule published
results from his series of experiments
(including the paddlewheel experiment)
which show that heat is a form of energy, a
fact that was accepted in the 1850s. The
relation between heat and energy was
important for the development of steam
engines, and in 1824 the experimental and
theoretical work of Sadi Carnot was
published. Carnot captured some of the
ideas of thermodynamics in his discussion
of the efficiency of an idealized engine.
Sadi Carnot's work provided a basis for the
formulation of the first law of
thermodynamics—a restatement of the
law of conservation of energy—which was
stated around 1850 by William Thomson,
later known as Lord Kelvin, and Rudolf
Clausius. Lord Kelvin, who had extended
the concept of absolute zero from gases
to all substances in 1848, drew upon the
engineering theory of Lazare Carnot, Sadi
Carnot, and Émile Clapeyron–as well as
the experimentation of James Prescott
Joule on the interchangeability of
mechanical, chemical, thermal, and
electrical forms of work—to formulate the
first law.

Kelvin and Clausius also stated the second

law of thermodynamics, which was
originally formulated in terms of the fact
that heat does not spontaneously flow
from a colder body to a hotter. Other
formulations followed quickly (for
example, the second law was expounded
in Thomson and Peter Guthrie Tait's
influential work Treatise on Natural
Philosophy) and Kelvin in particular
understood some of the law's general
implications. The second Law was the
idea that gases consist of molecules in
motion had been discussed in some detail
by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738, but had fallen
out of favor, and was revived by Clausius
in 1857. In 1850, Hippolyte Fizeau and
Léon Foucault measured the speed of light
in water and find that it is slower than in
air, in support of the wave model of light.
In 1852, Joule and Thomson
demonstrated that a rapidly expanding gas
cools, later named the Joule–Thomson
effect or Joule–Kelvin effect. Hermann
von Helmholtz puts forward the idea of the
heat death of the universe in 1854, the
same year that Clausius established the
importance of dQ/T (Clausius's theorem)
(though he did not yet name the quantity).
Statistical mechanics (a
fundamentally new approach to
science)

James Clerk Maxwell

(1831–1879)

In 1859, James Clerk Maxwell discovered

the distribution law of molecular
velocities. Maxwell showed that electric
and magnetic fields are propagated
outward from their source at a speed
equal to that of light and that light is one
of several kinds of electromagnetic
radiation, differing only in frequency and
wavelength from the others. In 1859,
Maxwell worked out the mathematics of
the distribution of velocities of the
molecules of a gas. The wave theory of
light was widely accepted by the time of
Maxwell's work on the electromagnetic
field, and afterward the study of light and
that of electricity and magnetism were
closely related. In 1864 James Maxwell
published his papers on a dynamical
theory of the electromagnetic field, and
stated that light is an electromagnetic
phenomenon in the 1873 publication of
Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and
Magnetism. This work drew upon
theoretical work by German theoreticians
such as Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm
Weber. The encapsulation of heat in
particulate motion, and the addition of
electromagnetic forces to Newtonian
dynamics established an enormously
robust theoretical underpinning to physical
observations.

The prediction that light represented a

transmission of energy in wave form
through a "luminiferous ether", and the
seeming confirmation of that prediction
with Helmholtz student Heinrich Hertz's
1888 detection of electromagnetic
radiation, was a major triumph for physical
theory and raised the possibility that even
more fundamental theories based on the
field could soon be developed.[56][57][58][59]
Experimental confirmation of Maxwell's
theory was provided by Hertz, who
generated and detected electric waves in
1886 and verified their properties, at the
same time foreshadowing their application
in radio, television, and other devices. In
1887, Heinrich Hertz discovered the
photoelectric effect. Research on the
electromagnetic waves began soon after,
with many scientists and inventors
conducting experiments on their
properties. In the mid to late 1890s
Guglielmo Marconi developed a radio
wave based wireless telegraphy system
[60] (see invention of radio).

The atomic theory of matter had been

proposed again in the early 19th century
by the chemist John Dalton and became
one of the hypotheses of the kinetic-
molecular theory of gases developed by
Clausius and James Clerk Maxwell to
explain the laws of thermodynamics.

Ludwig Boltzmann
(1844-1906)
The kinetic theory in turn led to a
revolutionary approach to science, the
statistical mechanics of Ludwig
Boltzmann (1844–1906) and Josiah
Willard Gibbs (1839–1903), which studies
the statistics of microstates of a system
and uses statistics to determine the state
of a physical system. Interrelating the
statistical likelihood of certain states of
organization of these particles with the
energy of those states, Clausius
reinterpreted the dissipation of energy to
be the statistical tendency of molecular
configurations to pass toward increasingly
likely, increasingly disorganized states
(coining the term "entropy" to describe the
disorganization of a state). The statistical
versus absolute interpretations of the
second law of thermodynamics set up a
dispute that would last for several
decades (producing arguments such as
"Maxwell's demon"), and that would not be
held to be definitively resolved until the
behavior of atoms was firmly established
in the early 20th century.[61][62] In 1902,
James Jeans found the length scale
required for gravitational perturbations to
grow in a static nearly homogeneous
medium.
Other developments

In 1822, botanist Robert Brown discovered

Brownian motion: pollen grains in water
undergoing movement resulting from their
bombardment by the fast-moving atoms or
molecules in the liquid.

In 1834, Carl Jacobi discovered his

uniformly rotating self-gravitating
ellipsoids (the Jacobi ellipsoid).

In 1834, John Russell observed a

nondecaying solitary water wave (soliton)
in the Union Canal near Edinburgh and
used a water tank to study the
dependence of solitary water wave
velocities on wave amplitude and water
depth. In 1835, Gaspard Coriolis examined
theoretically the mechanical efficiency of
waterwheels, and deduced the Coriolis
effect. In 1842, Christian Doppler proposed
the Doppler effect.

In 1851, Léon Foucault showed the Earth's

rotation with a huge pendulum (Foucault
pendulum).

There were important advances in

continuum mechanics in the first half of
the century, namely formulation of laws of
elasticity for solids and discovery of
Navier–Stokes equations for fluids.

20th century: birth of

modern physics

Marie Skłodowska-Curie
(1867–1934) She was awarded
two Nobel prizes, Physics (1903)
and Chemistry (1911)

At the end of the 19th century, physics had

evolved to the point at which classical
mechanics could cope with highly
complex problems involving macroscopic
situations; thermodynamics and kinetic
theory were well established; geometrical
and physical optics could be understood in
terms of electromagnetic waves; and the
conservation laws for energy and
momentum (and mass) were widely
accepted. So profound were these and
other developments that it was generally
accepted that all the important laws of
physics had been discovered and that,
henceforth, research would be concerned
with clearing up minor problems and
particularly with improvements of method
and measurement.
However, around 1900 serious doubts
arose about the completeness of the
classical theories—the triumph of
Maxwell's theories, for example, was
undermined by inadequacies that had
already begun to appear—and their
inability to explain certain physical
phenomena, such as the energy
distribution in blackbody radiation and the
photoelectric effect, while some of the
theoretical formulations led to paradoxes
when pushed to the limit. Prominent
physicists such as Hendrik Lorentz, Emil
Cohn, Ernst Wiechert and Wilhelm Wien
believed that some modification of
Maxwell's equations might provide the
basis for all physical laws. These
shortcomings of classical physics were
never to be resolved and new ideas were
required. At the beginning of the 20th
century a major revolution shook the world
of physics, which led to a new era,
generally referred to as modern physics.[63]
Radiation experiments

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940)
discovered the electron and
isotopy and also invented the
mass spectrometer. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1906.

In the 19th century, experimenters began

to detect unexpected forms of radiation:
Wilhelm Röntgen caused a sensation with
his discovery of X-rays in 1895; in 1896
Henri Becquerel discovered that certain
kinds of matter emit radiation on their own
accord. In 1897, J. J. Thomson discovered
the electron, and new radioactive elements
found by Marie and Pierre Curie raised
questions about the supposedly
indestructible atom and the nature of
matter. Marie and Pierre coined the term
"radioactivity" to describe this property of
matter, and isolated the radioactive
elements radium and polonium. Ernest
Rutherford and Frederick Soddy identified
two of Becquerel's forms of radiation with
electrons and the element helium.
Rutherford identified and named two types
of radioactivity and in 1911 interpreted
experimental evidence as showing that the
atom consists of a dense, positively
charged nucleus surrounded by negatively
charged electrons. Classical theory,
however, predicted that this structure
should be unstable. Classical theory had
also failed to explain successfully two
other experimental results that appeared
in the late 19th century. One of these was
the demonstration by Albert A. Michelson
and Edward W. Morley—known as the
Michelson–Morley experiment—which
showed there did not seem to be a
preferred frame of reference, at rest with
respect to the hypothetical luminiferous
ether, for describing electromagnetic
phenomena. Studies of radiation and
radioactive decay continued to be a
preeminent focus for physical and
chemical research through the 1930s,
when the discovery of nuclear fission by
Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch opened the
way to the practical exploitation of what
came to be called "atomic" energy.

Albert Einstein's theory of relativity

Albert Einstein (1879–1955),

photographed here in around 1905
In 1905, a 26-year-old German physicist
named Albert Einstein (then a patent clerk
in Bern, Switzerland) showed how
measurements of time and space are
affected by motion between an observer
and what is being observed. Einstein's
radical theory of relativity revolutionized
science. Although Einstein made many
other important contributions to science,
the theory of relativity alone represents
one of the greatest intellectual
achievements of all time. Although the
concept of relativity was not introduced by
Einstein, he recognised that the speed of
light in vacuum is constant, i.e., the same
for all observers, and an absolute upper
limit to speed. This does not impact a
person's day-to-day life since most objects
travel at speeds much slower than light
speed. For objects travelling near light
speed, however, the theory of relativity
shows that clocks associated with those
objects will run more slowly and that the
objects shorten in length according to
measurements of an observer on Earth.
Einstein also derived the famous equation,
E = mc2, which expresses the equivalence
of mass and energy.
Special relativity

Einstein proposed that gravitation is a

result of masses (or their equivalent
energies) curving ("bending") the
spacetime in which they exist, altering
the paths they follow within it.

Einstein argued that the speed of light was

a constant in all inertial reference frames
and that electromagnetic laws should
remain valid independent of reference
frame—assertions which rendered the
ether "superfluous" to physical theory, and
that held that observations of time and
length varied relative to how the observer
was moving with respect to the object
being measured (what came to be called
the "special theory of relativity"). It also
followed that mass and energy were
interchangeable quantities according to
the equation E=mc2. In another paper
published the same year, Einstein asserted
that electromagnetic radiation was
transmitted in discrete quantities
("quanta"), according to a constant that the
theoretical physicist Max Planck had
posited in 1900 to arrive at an accurate
theory for the distribution of blackbody
radiation—an assumption that explained
the strange properties of the photoelectric
effect.
The special theory of relativity is a
formulation of the relationship between
physical observations and the concepts of
space and time. The theory arose out of
contradictions between electromagnetism
and Newtonian mechanics and had great
impact on both those areas. The original
historical issue was whether it was
meaningful to discuss the electromagnetic
wave-carrying "ether" and motion relative
to it and also whether one could detect
such motion, as was unsuccessfully
attempted in the Michelson–Morley
experiment. Einstein demolished these
questions and the ether concept in his
special theory of relativity. However, his
basic formulation does not involve
detailed electromagnetic theory. It arises
out of the question: "What is time?"
Newton, in the Principia (1686), had given
an unambiguous answer: "Absolute, true,
and mathematical time, of itself, and from
its own nature, flows equably without
relation to anything external, and by
another name is called duration." This
definition is basic to all classical physics.

Einstein had the genius to question it, and

found that it was incomplete. Instead,
each "observer" necessarily makes use of
his or her own scale of time, and for two
observers in relative motion, their time-
scales will differ. This induces a related
effect on position measurements. Space
and time become intertwined concepts,
fundamentally dependent on the observer.
Each observer presides over his or her
own space-time framework or coordinate
system. There being no absolute frame of
reference, all observers of given events
make different but equally valid (and
reconcilable) measurements. What
remains absolute is stated in Einstein's
relativity postulate: "The basic laws of
physics are identical for two observers
who have a constant relative velocity with
respect to each other."
Special relativity had a profound effect on
physics: started as a rethinking of the
theory of electromagnetism, it found a
new symmetry law of nature, now called
Poincaré symmetry, that replaced the old
Galilean symmetry.

Special relativity exerted another long-

lasting effect on dynamics. Although
initially it was credited with the "unification
of mass and energy", it became evident
that relativistic dynamics established a
firm distinction between rest mass, which
is an invariant (observer independent)
property of a particle or system of
particles, and the energy and momentum
of a system. The latter two are separately
conserved in all situations but not
invariant with respect to different
observers. The term mass in particle
physics underwent a semantic change,
and since the late 20th century it almost
exclusively denotes the rest (or invariant)
mass.

General relativity

By 1916, Einstein was able to generalize

this further, to deal with all states of
motion including non-uniform acceleration,
which became the general theory of
relativity. In this theory Einstein also
specified a new concept, the curvature of
space-time, which described the
gravitational effect at every point in space.
In fact, the curvature of space-time
completely replaced Newton's universal
law of gravitation. According to Einstein,
gravitational force in the normal sense is a
kind of illusion caused by the geometry of
space. The presence of a mass causes a
curvature of space-time in the vicinity of
the mass, and this curvature dictates the
space-time path that all freely-moving
objects must follow. It was also predicted
from this theory that light should be
subject to gravity - all of which was verified
experimentally. This aspect of relativity
explained the phenomena of light bending
around the sun, predicted black holes as
well as properties of the Cosmic
microwave background radiation — a
discovery rendering fundamental
anomalies in the classic Steady-State
hypothesis. For his work on relativity, the
photoelectric effect and blackbody
radiation, Einstein received the Nobel Prize
in 1921.

The gradual acceptance of Einstein's

theories of relativity and the quantized
nature of light transmission, and of Niels
Bohr's model of the atom created as many
problems as they solved, leading to a full-
scale effort to reestablish physics on new
fundamental principles. Expanding
relativity to cases of accelerating
reference frames (the "general theory of
relativity") in the 1910s, Einstein posited
an equivalence between the inertial force
of acceleration and the force of gravity,
leading to the conclusion that space is
curved and finite in size, and the prediction
of such phenomena as gravitational
lensing and the distortion of time in
gravitational fields.
Quantum mechanics

Max Planck
(1858–1947)

Although relativity resolved the

electromagnetic phenomena conflict
demonstrated by Michelson and Morley, a
second theoretical problem was the
explanation of the distribution of
electromagnetic radiation emitted by a
black body; experiment showed that at
shorter wavelengths, toward the ultraviolet
end of the spectrum, the energy
approached zero, but classical theory
predicted it should become infinite. This
glaring discrepancy, known as the
ultraviolet catastrophe, was solved by the
new theory of quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics is the theory of
atoms and subatomic systems.
Approximately the first 30 years of the
20th century represent the time of the
conception and evolution of the theory.
The basic ideas of quantum theory were
introduced in 1900 by Max Planck (1858–
1947), who was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Physics in 1918 for his discovery of the
quantified nature of energy. The quantum
theory (which previously relied in the
"correspondence" at large scales between
the quantized world of the atom and the
continuities of the "classical" world) was
accepted when the Compton Effect
established that light carries momentum
and can scatter off particles, and when
Louis de Broglie asserted that matter can
be seen as behaving as a wave in much
the same way as electromagnetic waves
behave like particles (wave–particle
duality).
 Werner Heisenberg
(1901–1976)

In 1905, Einstein used the quantum theory

to explain the photoelectric effect, and in
1913 the Danish physicist Niels Bohr used
the same constant to explain the stability
of Rutherford's atom as well as the
frequencies of light emitted by hydrogen
gas. The quantized theory of the atom
gave way to a full-scale quantum
mechanics in the 1920s. New principles of
a "quantum" rather than a "classical"
mechanics, formulated in matrix-form by
Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and
Pascual Jordan in 1925, were based on
the probabilistic relationship between
discrete "states" and denied the possibility
of causality. Quantum mechanics was
extensively developed by Heisenberg,
Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, and Erwin
Schrödinger, who established an
equivalent theory based on waves in 1926;
but Heisenberg's 1927 "uncertainty
principle" (indicating the impossibility of
precisely and simultaneously measuring
position and momentum) and the
"Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum
mechanics (named after Bohr's home city)
continued to deny the possibility of
fundamental causality, though opponents
such as Einstein would metaphorically
assert that "God does not play dice with
the universe".[64] The new quantum
mechanics became an indispensable tool
in the investigation and explanation of
phenomena at the atomic level. Also in the
1920s, the Indian scientist Satyendra Nath
Bose's work on photons and quantum
mechanics provided the foundation for
Bose–Einstein statistics, the theory of the
Bose–Einstein condensate.

The spin–statistics theorem established

that any particle in quantum mechanics
may be either a boson (statistically Bose–
Einstein) or a fermion (statistically Fermi–
Dirac). It was later found that all
fundamental bosons transmit forces, such
as the photon that transmits
electromagnetism.

Fermions are particles "like electrons and

nucleons" and are the usual constituents
of matter. Fermi–Dirac statistics later
found numerous other uses, from
astrophysics (see Degenerate matter) to
semiconductor design.
Contemporary physics

Quantum field theory

A Feynman diagram representing (left to right)

the production of a photon (blue sine wave) from
the annihilation of an electron and its
complementary antiparticle, the positron. The
photon becomes a quark–antiquark pair and a
gluon (green spiral) is released.

Richard Feynman's Los Alamos ID

badge
As the philosophically inclined continued
to debate the fundamental nature of the
universe, quantum theories continued to
be produced, beginning with Paul Dirac's
formulation of a relativistic quantum
theory in 1928. However, attempts to
quantize electromagnetic theory entirely
were stymied throughout the 1930s by
theoretical formulations yielding infinite
energies. This situation was not
considered adequately resolved until after
World War II ended, when Julian
Schwinger, Richard Feynman and Sin-Itiro
Tomonaga independently posited the
technique of renormalization, which
allowed for an establishment of a robust
quantum electrodynamics (QED).[65]

Meanwhile, new theories of fundamental

particles proliferated with the rise of the
idea of the quantization of fields through
"exchange forces" regulated by an
exchange of short-lived "virtual" particles,
which were allowed to exist according to
the laws governing the uncertainties
inherent in the quantum world. Notably,
Hideki Yukawa proposed that the positive
charges of the nucleus were kept together
courtesy of a powerful but short-range
force mediated by a particle with a mass
between that of the electron and proton.
This particle, the "pion", was identified in
1947 as part of what became a slew of
particles discovered after World War II.
Initially, such particles were found as
ionizing radiation left by cosmic rays, but
increasingly came to be produced in newer
and more powerful particle
accelerators.[66]

Outside particle physics, significant

advances of the time were:

the invention of the laser (1964 Nobel

Prize in Physics);
the theoretical and experimental
research of superconductivity, especially
 the invention of a quantum theory of
superconductivity by Vitaly Ginzburg and
Lev Landau (1962 Nobel Prize in
Physics) and, later, its explanation via
Cooper pairs (1972 Nobel Prize in
Physics). The Cooper pair was an early
example of quasiparticles.

Unified field theories

Einstein deemed that all fundamental

interactions in nature can be explained in a
single theory. Unified field theories were
numerous attempts to "merge" several
interactions. One of many formulations of
such theories (as well as field theories in
general) is a gauge theory, a generalization
of the idea of symmetry. Eventually the
Standard Model (see below) succeeded in
unification of strong, weak, and
electromagnetic interactions. All attempts
to unify gravitation with something else
failed.

Particle physics and the Standard

Model

The Standard Model.

 Chien-Shiung Wu worked on parity
violation in 1956 and announced her
results in January 1957.[67]

When parity was broken in weak

interactions by Chien-Shiung Wu in her
experiment, a series of discoveries were
created thereafter.[68] The interaction of
these particles by scattering and decay
provided a key to new fundamental
quantum theories. Murray Gell-Mann and
Yuval Ne'eman brought some order to
these new particles by classifying them
according to certain qualities, beginning
with what Gell-Mann referred to as the
"Eightfold Way". While its further
development, the quark model, at first
seemed inadequate to describe strong
nuclear forces, allowing the temporary rise
of competing theories such as the S-
Matrix, the establishment of quantum
chromodynamics in the 1970s finalized a
set of fundamental and exchange
particles, which allowed for the
establishment of a "standard model"
based on the mathematics of gauge
invariance, which successfully described
all forces except for gravitation, and which
remains generally accepted within its
domain of application.[64]

The Standard Model, based on the Yang–

Mills theory[69] groups the electroweak
interaction theory and quantum
chromodynamics into a structure denoted
by the gauge group SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1). The
formulation of the unification of the
electromagnetic and weak interactions in
the standard model is due to Abdus
Salam, Steven Weinberg and,
subsequently, Sheldon Glashow.
Electroweak theory was later confirmed
experimentally (by observation of neutral
weak currents),[70][71][72][73] and
distinguished by the 1979 Nobel Prize in
Physics.[74]

Since the 1970s, fundamental particle

physics has provided insights into early
universe cosmology, particularly the Big
Bang theory proposed as a consequence
of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
However, starting in the 1990s,
astronomical observations have also
provided new challenges, such as the need
for new explanations of galactic stability
("dark matter") and the apparent
acceleration in the expansion of the
universe ("dark energy").
While accelerators have confirmed most
aspects of the Standard Model by
detecting expected particle interactions at
various collision energies, no theory
reconciling general relativity with the
Standard Model has yet been found,
although supersymmetry and string theory
were believed by many theorists to be a
promising avenue forward. The Large
Hadron Collider, however, which began
operating in 2008, has failed to find any
evidence whatsoever that is supportive of
supersymmetry and string theory.[75]
Cosmology

Cosmology may be said to have become a

serious research question with the
publication of Einstein's General Theory of
Relativity in 1915 although it did not enter
the scientific mainstream until the period
known as the "Golden age of general
relativity".

About a decade later, in the midst of what

was dubbed the "Great Debate", Hubble
and Slipher discovered the expansion of
universe in the 1920s measuring the
redshifts of Doppler spectra from galactic
nebulae. Using Einstein's general relativity,
Lemaître and Gamow formulated what
would become known as the big bang
theory. A rival, called the steady state
theory, was devised by Hoyle, Gold,
Narlikar and Bondi.

Cosmic background radiation was verified

in the 1960s by Penzias and Wilson, and
this discovery favoured the big bang at the
expense of the steady state scenario.
Later work was by Smoot et al. (1989),
among other contributors, using data from
the Cosmic Background explorer (CoBE)
and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe (WMAP) satellites that refined these
observations. The 1980s (the same
decade of the COBE measurements) also
saw the proposal of inflation theory by
Alan Guth.

Recently the problems of dark matter and

dark energy have risen to the top of the
cosmology agenda.

Higgs boson

One possible signature of a Higgs boson

from a simulated proton–proton collision.
It decays almost immediately into two jets
of hadrons and two electrons, visible as
lines.
On July 4, 2012, physicists working at
CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced
that they had discovered a new subatomic
particle greatly resembling the Higgs
boson, a potential key to an understanding
of why elementary particles have mass
and indeed to the existence of diversity
and life in the universe.[76] For now, some
physicists are calling it a "Higgslike"
particle.[76] Joe Incandela, of the University
of California, Santa Barbara, said, "It's
something that may, in the end, be one of
the biggest observations of any new
phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40
years, going way back to the discovery of
quarks, for example."[76] Michael Turner, a
cosmologist at the University of Chicago
and the chairman of the physics center
board, said:

"This is a big moment for

particle physics and a
crossroads — will this be the
high water mark or will it be the
first of many discoveries that
point us toward solving the
really big questions that we
have posed?"

— Michael Turner,
University of Chicago[76]
Peter Higgs was one of six physicists,
working in three independent groups, who,
in 1964, invented the notion of the Higgs
field ("cosmic molasses"). The others were
Tom Kibble of Imperial College, London;
Carl Hagen of the University of Rochester;
Gerald Guralnik of Brown University; and
François Englert and Robert Brout, both of
Université libre de Bruxelles.[76]

Although they have never been seen,

Higgslike fields play an important role in
theories of the universe and in string
theory. Under certain conditions, according
to the strange accounting of Einsteinian
physics, they can become suffused with
energy that exerts an antigravitational
force. Such fields have been proposed as
the source of an enormous burst of
expansion, known as inflation, early in the
universe and, possibly, as the secret of the
dark energy that now seems to be
speeding up the expansion of the
universe.[76]

Physical sciences

With increased accessibility to and

elaboration upon advanced analytical
techniques in the 19th century, physics
was defined as much, if not more, by those
techniques than by the search for
universal principles of motion and energy,
and the fundamental nature of matter.
Fields such as acoustics, geophysics,
astrophysics, aerodynamics, plasma
physics, low-temperature physics, and
solid-state physics joined optics, fluid
dynamics, electromagnetism, and
mechanics as areas of physical research.
In the 20th century, physics also became
closely allied with such fields as electrical,
aerospace and materials engineering, and
physicists began to work in government
and industrial laboratories as much as in
academic settings. Following World War II,
the population of physicists increased
dramatically, and came to be centered on
the United States, while, in more recent
decades, physics has become a more
international pursuit than at any time in its
previous history.

Articles on the history of

physics

On branches of physics

History of astronomy (timeline)

History of condensed matter (timeline)
History of aerodynamics
History of materials science
(timeline)
 History of fluid mechanics
(timeline)
History of metamaterials
History of nanotechnology
History of superconductivity
History of computational physics
(timeline)
History of electromagnetic theory
(timeline)
History of electrical engineering
History of the philosophy of field
theory
History of Maxwell's equations
History of optics
 History of spectroscopy
History of geophysics
History of gravity, spacetime and
cosmology
History of the Big Bang theory
History of cosmology (timeline)
History of gravitational theory
(timeline)
History of general relativity
History of special relativity
(timeline)
History of Lorentz
transformations
History of classical mechanics
(timeline)
History of variational principles in
physics
History of nuclear physics
Discovery of nuclear fission
History of nuclear fusion
History of nuclear power
History of nuclear weapons
History of quantum mechanics
(timeline)
Atomic theory
History of molecular theory
History of quantum field theory
 Histoyr of quantum information
(timeline)
History of subatomic physics
(timeline)
History of thermodynamics (timeline)
History of energy
History of entropy
History of perpetual motion
machines

On specific discoveries

Discovery of cosmic microwave

background radiation
History of graphene
First observation of gravitational waves
 Subatomic particles (timeline)
Search for the Higgs boson
Discovery of the neutron

Historical periods

Classical physics
Copernican Revolution
Golden age of physics
Golden age of cosmology
Modern physics
Physics in the medieval Islamic world
Astronomy in the medieval Islamic
world
Noisy intermediate-scale quantum era
See also
Physics
portal
Science
portal

List of physicists
List of physics conferences
List of Nobel laureates in Physics
List of important publications in physics
List of experiments in physics

Notes
1. Click the image to see further details.
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Further reading
Buchwald, Jed Z. and Robert Fox, eds.
The Oxford Handbook of the History of
Physics (2014) 976pp; excerpt (https://w
ww.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook-Hist
ory-Physics-Handbooks/dp/019969625
X/)
Byers, Nina; Williams, Gary (2006). Out
of the Shadows: Contributions of
Twentieth-Century Women to Physics (htt
ps://archive.org/details/outofshadowsc
ont0000unse) . Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0-521-82197-5.
Cropper, William H. (2004). Great
Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading
Physicists from Galileo to Hawking.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-
517324-4.
Dear, Peter (2001). Revolutionizing the
Sciences: European Knowledge and Its
Ambitions, 1500–1700. Princeton:
Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-
08859-4. OCLC 46622656 (https://www.
worldcat.org/oclc/46622656) ..
Gamow, George (1988). The Great
Physicists from Galileo to Einstein (http
s://archive.org/details/greatphysicistsf0
000gamo) . Dover Publications. ISBN 0-
486-25767-3.
Heilbron, John L. (2005). The Oxford
Guide to the History of Physics and
Astronomy. Oxford University Press.
ISBN 0-19-517198-5.
Nye, Mary Jo (1996). Before Big Science:
The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and
Physics, 1800–1940. New York: Twayne.
ISBN 0-8057-9512-X. OCLC 185866968
(https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/185866
968) ..
Segrè, Emilio (1984). From Falling Bodies
to Radio Waves: Classical Physicists and
Their Discoveries (https://archive.org/de
tails/fromfallingbodie00segr) . New
York: W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-1482-
5. OCLC 9943504 (https://www.worldca
t.org/oclc/9943504) ..
Segrè, Emilio (1980). From X-Rays to
Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their
Discoveries (https://archive.org/details/f
romxraystoquark0000segr) . San
Francisco: W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-
1147-8. OCLC 237246197 (https://www.
worldcat.org/oclc/237246197) ..
Weaver, Jefferson H. (editor) (1987). The
World of Physics (https://archive.org/det
ails/worldofphysicssm00weav) . Simon
and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-49931-9.
 {{cite book}}: |author= has
generic name (help) A selection of 56
articles, written by physicists.
Commentaries and notes by Lloyd Motz
and Dale McAdoo.
de Haas, Paul, "Historic Papers in
Physics (20th Century)" (https://web.arc
hive.org/web/20090826083339/http://h
ome.tiscali.nl/physis/HistoricPaper/)

External links
"Selected Works about Isaac Newton
and His Thought" (http://www.newtonpr
oject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=90)
 from The Newton Project (http://www.ne
wtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/) .

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