This timeline lists significant discoveries in physics and the laws of nature, including experimental discoveries, theoretical proposals that were confirmed experimentally, and theories that have significantly influenced current thinking in modern physics. Such discoveries are often a multi-step, multi-person process. Multiple discovery sometimes occurs when multiple research groups discover the same phenomenon at about the same time, and scientific priority is often disputed. The listings below include some of the most significant people and ideas by date of publication or experiment.
Pre-scientific
- 250 BCE - Archimedes: Archimedes' principle
- 384–322 BCE - Aristotle: Aristotelian_physics
- 500 CE - John Philoponus: Theory of impetus
16th century
- 1514 - Nicholas Copernicus: Heliocentrism
- 1589 - Galileo Galilei: Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment
17th century
- 1609, 1619 - Kepler: Kepler's laws of planetary motion
- 1613 - Galileo Galilei: Inertia
- 1621 - Willebrord Snellius: Snell's law
- 1632 - Galileo: The Galilean principle (the laws of motion are the same in all inertial frames)
- 1660 - Blaise Pascal: Pascal's Principle
- 1660 - Robert Hooke: Hooke's law
- 1662 - Robert Boyle: Boyle's law
- 1676 - Rømer: Rømer's determination of the speed of light traveling from the moons of Jupiter.
- 1678 - Christiaan Huygens mathematical wave theory of light, published in his Treatise on light
- 1687 - Isaac Newton: Newton's laws of motion, and Newton's law of universal gravitation[1]
18th century
- 1782 - Antoine Lavoisier: Conservation of matter
- 1785 - Charles-Augustin de Coulomb: Coulomb's inverse-square law for electric charges confirmed[2]
19th century
- 1801 - Thomas Young: Wave theory of light
- 1803 - John Dalton: Atomic theory of matter
- 1806 - Thomas Young: Kinetic energy
- 1814 - Augustin-Jean Fresnel: Wave theory of light, optical interference
- 1820 - André-Marie Ampère, Jean-Baptiste Biot, and Félix Savart: Evidence for electromagnetic interactions (Biot–Savart law)
- 1824 - Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot: Ideal gas cycle analysis (Carnot cycle), internal combustion engine
- 1826 - Ampère's circuital law
- 1827 - Georg Ohm: Electrical resistance
- 1831 - Michael Faraday: Faraday's law of induction
- 1838 - Michael Faraday: Lines of force
- 1838 - Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Carl Friedrich Gauss: Earth's magnetic field[clarification needed]
- 1842-43 - William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin and Julius von Mayer: Conservation of energy
- 1842 - Christian Doppler: Doppler effect
- 1845 - Michael Faraday: Faraday rotation (interaction of light and magnetic field)
- 1847 - Hermann von Helmholtz & James Prescott Joule: Conservation of Energy 2[clarification needed]
- 1850-51 - William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin & Rudolf Clausius: Second law of thermodynamics
- 1857-59 - Rudolf Clausius & James Clerk Maxwell: Kinetic theory of gases
- 1861 - Gustav Kirchhoff: Black body
- 1861-62 - Maxwell's equations
- 1863 - Rudolf Clausius: Entropy
- 1864 - James Clerk Maxwell: A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (electromagnetic radiation)
- 1867 - James Clerk Maxwell: On the Dynamical Theory of Gases (kinetic theory of gases)
- 1871-89 - Ludwig Boltzmann & Josiah Willard Gibbs: Statistical mechanics (Boltzmann equation, 1872)
- 1873 - Maxwell: A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
- 1884 - Boltzmann derives Stefan radiation law[citation needed]
- 1887 - Michelson–Morley experiment
- 1887 - Heinrich Rudolf Hertz: Electromagnetic waves
- 1888 - Johannes Rydberg: Rydberg formula
- 1889, 1892 - Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction
- 1893 - Wilhelm Wien: Wien's displacement law for black-body radiation
- 1895 - Wilhelm Röntgen: X-rays
- 1896 - Henri Becquerel: Radioactivity
- 1896 - Pieter Zeeman: Zeeman effect
- 1897 - J. J. Thomson: Electron discovered
20th century
- 1900 - Max Planck: Formula for black-body radiation - the quanta solution to radiation ultraviolet catastrophe
- 1904 - J. J. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom 1904
- 1905 - Albert Einstein: Special relativity, proposes the photon to explain the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, Mass–energy equivalence
- 1911 - Ernest Rutherford: Discovery of the atomic nucleus (Rutherford model)
- 1911 - Kamerlingh Onnes: Superconductivity
- 1913 - Niels Bohr: Bohr model of the atom
- 1915 - Albert Einstein: General relativity
- 1916 - Schwarzschild metric modeling gravity outside a large sphere
- 1919 - Arthur Eddington:Light bending confirmed - evidence for general relativity
- 1919-1926 - Kaluza–Klein theory proposing unification of gravity and electromagnetism
- 1922 - Alexander Friedmann proposes expanding universe
- 1922-37 - Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric cosmological model
- 1923 - Stern–Gerlach experiment
- 1923 - Edwin Hubble: Galaxies discovered
- 1923 - Arthur Compton: Particle nature of photons confirmed by observation of photon momentum
- 1924 - Bose–Einstein statistics
- 1924 - Louis de Broglie: De Broglie wave
- 1925 - Werner Heisenberg: Matrix mechanics
- 1925-27 - Niels Bohr & Max Planck: Quantum mechanics
- 1925 - Stellar structure understood
- 1926 - Fermi-Dirac Statistics
- 1926 - Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger Equation
- 1927 - Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty principle
- 1927 - Georges Lemaître: Big Bang
- 1927 - Paul Dirac: Dirac equation
- 1927 - Max Born interpretation of the Schrödinger equation
- 1928 - Paul Dirac proposes the antiparticle
- 1929 - Edwin Hubble: Expansion of the universe confirmed
- 1932 - Carl David Anderson: Antimatter discovered
- 1932 - James Chadwick: Neutron discovered
- 1933 - Ernst Ruska: Invention of the electron microscope
- 1935 - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: Chandrasekhar limit for black hole collapse
- 1937 - Muon discovered by Carl David Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer
- 1938 - Pyotr Kapitsa: Superfluidity discovered
- 1938 - Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann Nuclear fission discovered
- 1938-39 - Stellar fusion explains energy production in stars
- 1939 - Uranium fission discovered
- 1941 - Feynman path integral
- 1944 - Theory of magnetism in 2D: Ising model
- 1947 - C.F. Powell, Giuseppe Occhialini, César Lattes: Pion discovered
- 1948 - Richard Feynman, Shinichiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, Freeman Dyson: Quantum electrodynamics
- 1948 - Invention of the maser and laser by Charles Townes
- 1948 - Feynman diagrams
- 1956 - Electron neutrino discovered
- 1956-57 - Parity violation found[citation needed]
- 1957 - BCS theory explaining superconductivity
- 1959-60 - Role of topology in quantum physics predicted and confirmed[citation needed]
- 1962 - SU(3) theory of strong interactions
- 1962 - Muon neutrino discovered
- 1963 - Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig: Quarks predicted
- 1964 - Bell's Theorem initiates quantitative study of quantum entanglement
- 1967 - Unification of weak interaction and electromagnetism (electroweak theory)
- 1967 - Solar neutrino problem found
- 1967 - Pulsars (rotating neutron stars) discovered
- 1968 - Experimental evidence for quarks found
- 1968 - Vera Rubin: Dark matter theories
- 1970-73 - Standard Model of elementary particles invented
- 1971 - Helium 3 superfluidity
- 1971-75 - Michael Fisher, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Leo Kadanoff: Renormalization group
- 1972 - Black Hole Entropy
- 1974 - Black hole radiation (Hawking radiation) predicted
- 1974 - Charmed quark discovered
- 1975 - Tau lepton found
- 1977 - Bottom quark found
- 1980 - Strangeness as a signature of quark-gluon plasma predicted[3]
- 1980 - Richard Feynman proposes quantum computing
- 1980 - Quantum Hall effect
- 1981 - Alan Guth Theory of cosmic inflation proposed[dubious ]
- 1981 - Fractional quantum Hall effect discovered
- 1984 - W and Z bosons directly observed
- 1984 - First laboratory implementation of quantum cryptography
- 1993 - Quantum teleportation of unknown states proposed
- 1994 - Shor's algorithm discovered, initiating the serious study of quantum computation
- 1994-97 - Matrix models/M-theory
- 1995 - Wolfgang Ketterle: Bose–Einstein condensate observed
- 1995 - Top quark discovered
- 1998 - Accelerating expansion of the universe discovered by the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team
- 1998 - Atmospheric neutrino oscillation established
- 1999 - Lene Vestergaard Hau: Slow light experimentally demonstrated
21st century
- 2000 - Quark-gluon plasma found[4]
- 2000 - Tau neutrino found
- 2001 - Solar neutrino oscillation observed, resolving the solar neutrino problem
- 2003 - WMAP observations of cosmic microwave background
- 2004 - Isolation and characterization of graphene
- 2008 - 16-year study of stellar orbits around Sagittarius_A* provide strong evidence for a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy
- 2009 - Planck begins observations of cosmic microwave background
- 2012 - Higgs boson found by the Compact Muon Solenoid[5] and ATLAS[6] experiments at the Large Hadron Collider
- 2015 - Gravitational waves are observed
- 2019 - First image of a Black hole
- 2020 - The first room-temperature superconductor identified
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