History of physics: chronology, physicists and their discoveries

Although the history of physics as an independent science began only in the 17th century, its origins date back to the deepest antiquity, when people began to systematize their first knowledge of the world around them. Until the New Times, they belonged to natural philosophy and included information on mechanics, astronomy and physiology. The real history of physics began with the experiments of Galileo and his students. Also the foundation of this discipline was laid down by Newton.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, key concepts appeared: energy, mass, atoms, momentum, etc. In the 20th century, the limitations of classical physics became clear (besides it, quantum physics, the theory of relativity, the theory of microparticles, etc.) emerged. Natural scientific knowledge is supplemented even today, as many unresolved problems and questions remain about the nature of our world and the whole universe.

Antiquity

Many pagan religions of the Ancient World were based on astrology and knowledge of astrologers. Thanks to their studies of the night sky, the formation of optics took place. The accumulation of astronomical knowledge could not but affect the development of mathematics. However, the ancients could not explain the causes of natural phenomena theoretically. The priests attributed lightning and solar eclipses to divine wrath, which had nothing to do with science.

At the same time, in ancient Egypt, we learned to measure length, weight and angle. This knowledge was necessary for architects in the construction of monumental pyramids and temples. Applied mechanics developed. Strong in her were the Babylonians. They, based on their astronomical knowledge, began to use the day to measure time.

The ancient Chinese history of physics began in the 7th century BC. E. The accumulated experience in crafts and construction was subjected to scientific analysis, the results of which were set forth in philosophical writings. The most famous author is Mo-tzu, who lived in the IV century BC. E. He made the first attempt to formulate the fundamental law of inertia. Even then, the Chinese invented the first compass. They discovered the laws of geometrical optics and knew about the existence of a camera obscura. In the Middle Kingdom appeared rudiments of the theory of music and acoustics, which for a long time had not been suspected in the West.

Antiquity

The ancient history of physics is best known by Greek philosophers. Their research was based on geometric and algebraic knowledge. For example, the Pythagoreans were the first to declare that nature obeys the universal laws of mathematics. This pattern was seen by the Greeks in optics, astronomy, music, mechanics and other disciplines.

The history of the development of physics is difficult to imagine without the works of Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, Lucretius Kara and Heron. Their works have survived to our times in a fairly holistic form. Greek philosophers differed from contemporaries from other countries in that they explained physical laws not by mythical concepts, but strictly from the scientific point of view. At the same time, the Hellenes also had major mistakes. These include the mechanics of Aristotle. The history of the development of physics as a science owes much to the thinkers of Hellas, if only because their natural philosophy remained the foundation of international science until the 17th century.

The contribution of the Alexandrian Greeks

Democritus formulated the theory of atoms, according to which all bodies consist of indivisible and tiny particles. Empedocles proposed the law of conservation of matter. Archimedes laid the foundations of hydrostatics and mechanics, setting forth the theory of the lever and calculating the magnitude of the buoyancy force of the fluid. He also became the author of the term "center of gravity".

The Alexandrian Greek Heron is considered one of the greatest engineers in human history. He created a steam turbine, generalized knowledge of the elasticity of air and compressibility of gases. The history of the development of physics and optics continued thanks to Euclid, who researched the theory of mirrors and the laws of perspective.

Middle Ages

After the fall of the Roman Empire came the collapse of ancient civilization. Many of the knowledge was consigned to oblivion. Europe almost for a thousand years stopped in its scientific development. Christian monasteries became temples of knowledge, which managed to preserve some works of the past. However, the progress was hampered by the church itself. She subordinated philosophy to theological doctrine. Thinkers who tried to go beyond it were declared heretics and cruelly punished by the Inquisition.

Against this background, primacy in the natural sciences passed to the Muslims. The history of the origin of physics among the Arabs is associated with the translation into their language of the works of ancient Greek scholars. On their basis, the thinkers of the East made several important discoveries of their own. For example, inventor Al-Jaziri described the first crankshaft.

European stagnation lasted until the Renaissance. For the Middle Ages in the Old World invented glasses and explained the occurrence of the rainbow. The German philosopher of the XV century, Nikolai Kuzansky first suggested that the universe is infinite, and thus far ahead of his time. After several decades, Leonardo da Vinci became the pioneer of the phenomenon of capillarity and the law of friction. He also tried to create a perpetual motion machine, but without coping with this task, he began to theoretically prove the impossibility of such a project.

Renaissance

In 1543 the Polish astronomer Nikolai Copernicus published the main work of his entire life "On the rotation of celestial bodies." In this book, for the first time in the Christian Old World, an attempt was made to protect the heliocentric model of the world according to which the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not vice versa, as the geocentric model of Ptolemy assumed. Many scientists of physics and their discoveries claim the title of great, but it is the appearance of the book "On the rotation of celestial bodies" that is considered the beginning of the scientific revolution, which was followed by the emergence not only of modern physics, but also of modern science as a whole.

Another famous modern scientist Galileo Galilei was most famous for the invention of a telescope (he also owns the invention of a thermometer). In addition, he formulated the law of inertia and the principle of relativity. Thanks to the discoveries of Galileo, a completely new mechanic was born. Without him, the history of studying physics would have stalled for a long time. Galileo, like many of his widely contemporaries, had to resist the pressure of the church, which tried to protect the old order with the last efforts.

XVII century

The growing interest in science continued in the 17th century. German mechanic and mathematician Johannes Kepler became the pioneer of the laws of planetary motion in the solar system (Kepler's laws). His views he outlined in the book "New Astronomy", published in 1609. Kepler opposed Ptolemy, concluding that the planets move in ellipses, and not in circles, as was believed back in antiquity. The same scientist made a significant contribution to the development of optics. He investigated hyperopia and myopia, finding out the physiological functions of the lens of the eye. Kepler introduced the concepts of the optical axis and focus, formulated the theory of lenses.

French René Descartes created a new scientific discipline - analytical geometry. He also proposed the law of light refraction. The main work of Descartes was the book "The Beginning of Philosophy", published in 1644.

Few physicists and their discoveries are known as the Englishman Isaac Newton. In 1687 he wrote the revolutionary book "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy". In it, the researcher outlined the law of universal gravitation and the three laws of mechanics (also known as Newton's laws). This scientist worked on the theory of color, optics, integral and differential calculi. The history of physics, the history of the laws of mechanics - all this is closely related to the discoveries of Newton.

New frontiers

The XVIII century gave science a lot of outstanding names. Leonard Euler is particularly distinguished among them. This Swiss mechanic and mathematician wrote more than 800 works on physics and such topics as mathematical analysis, celestial mechanics, optics, music theory, ballistics, etc. The Petersburg Academy of Sciences recognized him as his academician, because of which Euler spent a considerable part of his life in Russia. It was this researcher who initiated the analytical mechanics.

It is interesting that the history of the subject of physics has developed as we know it, thanks not only to professional scientists, but also to amateur researchers, who are much more known in a completely different quality. The most striking example of such self-taught was the American politician Benjamin Franklin. He invented a lightning rod, made a great contribution to the study of electricity and made an assumption about its connection with the phenomenon of magnetism.

At the end of the XVIII century, the Italian Alessandro Volta created a "volt pole." His invention became the first electric battery in the history of mankind. This century was also marked by the appearance of a mercury thermometer, created by Gabriel Fahrenheit. Another important event of invention was the invention of a steam engine, which occurred in 1784. It gave rise to new means of production and industrial restructuring.

Applied discoveries

If the history of the beginning of physics developed on the basis that science was supposed to explain the cause of natural phenomena, then in the XIX century the situation changed significantly. Now she has a new vocation. From physics began to demand the management of natural forces. In connection with this, not only experimental but also applied physics began to develop rapidly. "Newton Electricity" Andre-Marie Amper introduced a new concept of electric current. In this same field, Michael Faraday worked. He discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction, the laws of electrolysis, diamagnetism and became the author of such terms as anode, cathode, dielectric, electrolyte, paramagnetism, diamagnetism, etc.

New sections of science have been formed. Thermodynamics, elasticity theory, statistical mechanics, statistical physics, radiophysics, elasticity theory, seismology, meteorology - they all formed a single modern picture of the world.

In the XIX century, new scientific models and concepts emerged. Thomas Young established the law of conservation of energy, James Clerk Maxwell proposed his own electromagnetic theory. Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev became the author of the elements that significantly influenced the entire physics of the periodic system. In the second half of the century, electrical engineering and an internal combustion engine appeared. They have become the fruits of applied physics, focused on solving certain technological problems.

Rethinking Science

In the twentieth century, the history of physics, briefly, went to the stage when the crisis of already established classical theoretical models came. Old scientific formulas began to contradict new data. For example, the researchers found that the speed of light does not depend on a seemingly unshakable frame of reference. At the turn of the century, phenomena requiring detailed explanation were discovered: electrons, radioactivity, X-rays.

Owing to the accumulated puzzles, a revision of the old classical physics took place. The key event in this regular scientific revolution was the justification of the theory of relativity. Its author was Albert Einstein, who first told the world about the deep connection of space and time. A new branch of theoretical physics has appeared-quantum physics. Several scientists with a world-wide name took part in its formation: Max Planck, Max Bon, Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Ehrenfest and others.

Modern Challenges

In the second half of the 20th century, the history of the development of physics, the chronology of which continues today, has moved to a fundamentally new stage. This period was marked by the flourishing of space exploration. Astrophysics made an unprecedented jump. Space telescopes, interplanetary probes, extraterrestrial radiation detectors have appeared. A detailed study of the physical data of various bodies of the solar planet began. With the help of modern technology, scientists have discovered exoplanets and new luminaries, including radio galaxies, pulsars and quasars.

The cosmos continues to conceal a lot of unsolved mysteries. Gravitational waves, dark energy, dark matter, acceleration of the expansion of the universe and its structure are studied. The theory of the Big Bang is being supplemented. Data that can be obtained under terrestrial conditions are incommensurably small compared to how much scientists have in space.

The key problems facing physicists today include several fundamental challenges: the development of a quantum version of the gravitational theory, the generalization of quantum mechanics, the unification of all known interaction forces into one theory, the search for "fine tuning of the universe," and the precise definition of the phenomenon of dark energy and dark Matter.