HISTORICAL

ANTECEDENTS IN THE
WORLD
A HUNDRED YEARS OF
DEVELOPMENT (1800-1900)
• As had already been said, the invention of the electric
battery in 1799 created a wholeness field of scientific ideas
and in the following years, various scientists discovered
new things, such as Danish Hans Christian Orsted, who
established a connection between electricity and
magnetism; Michael Faraday of London's Royal Institution,
who invented the world's first electric motor; and Scottish
James Clerk Maxwell, who made some calculations and in
the process, solved the complex mathematics of
electromagnetism **
Invisibility Matters
• It seems that the discovery of invisible figures of electromagnetic
waves came before they were figured out or the specific laws that
characterized their movement were understood.
• We can refer to the German astronomer William Herschel as an
example. Herschel, during his scientific endeavors, realized that his
thermometer showed a higher temperature over the red end of
the Visible spectrum. He had accidentally stumbled upon infrared
radiation, and thus, proved that there was more than meets the
eye in the spectrum aside from visible light.
• In a similar unintentional manner, Wilhelm Rontgen also
discovered the soon-to-be famous X-rays in his experiments in
Germany. **
• Meanwhile, British physician Thomas Young put rest the
argument of whether light was a wave or a particle by
discovering wavelike interference in his studies. **
• Austrian physicist Christian Doppler also made famous
the "Doppler effect" by expounding on the color of
binary stars. **
• In France, French physicists Hippolyte Fizeau and Leon
Foucault were able to measure the speed of light and
concluded that light traveled faster in air and water. **
Chemical Reactions
• Other scientists also drew inspiration from this age, with British
meteorologist John Dalton focusing on the potential use of atomic
weights for veteran chemists, another chemist, Swedish Jons Jakob
Berzelius also 'contributed to the growing knowledge on this field by
making a full list of atomic weights; from France, Louis Pasteur
illustrated in Paris that the spontaneous generation of life could not
be done. An overwhelming flow of ideas soon inspired a new
generation of scientific experts, such as German chemist August
Kekule, who discovered the structure of the benzene molecule;
Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who was able to solve the
problem of the periodic table of the elements; and finally, twice
Nobel-Prize winner, Marie Curie, who in her laboratory was able to
separate polonium from radium. **
Relics from the Past
• The century was soon filled with a blossoming of knowledge on the
appreciation of life. This was obvious in the field of archaeology
where Mary Anning from England presented a substantial collection
of fossils of extinct animals.
• Richard Owen, an English biologist, also pioneered the use of the
word "dinosaurs" to describe the "terrible lizards" that once were
kings’ on this earth.
• Geologist Louis Agassiz from Switzerland, also forwarded the view
that big parts of the planet were once covered with impregnable ice.
• Another man of science, Alexander von Humboldt, was, likewise, able
to uncover the connections inherent in nature and, thus, founded the
study of ecology. **
• Later, in the mid 19th century, both British naturalists Alfred
Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin came up with the idea on
the process of evolution by means of natural selection. **
• Darwin follower, Thomas Henry Huxley illustrated that birds
could have evolved from the now-extinct dinosaurs.
• In the meantime, a German-speaking friar from Silesia, Gregor
Mendel, made inroads into the ultimate function of genetics by
seriously studying thousands of pea plants. Such data would later
on provide the genetic mechanism for natural selection.
• Because of this scientific explosion of knowledge, British physicist
Lord Kelvin boldly declared in early 1900s that: "There is nothing
new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and
more precise measurement."
THE DAWN OF NEW ERA (1900-1945)
• Many things happened in the 19th century, which
changed the fundamental views of many scientists. The
first half of the 20th century would, however, provide
more surprises as the old perspective of classical
physics, relatively stable since the time of Isaac
Newton, was about to be discarded and soon, a new
way of looking at matter, time and space was about to
begin.
A New-look Physics
• It was clear to physicists that classical equations of previous periods were
not fundamentally sound and something had to give.
• In early 1900, Max Planck made an important discovery that
electromagnetism traveled in distinct packets and not in continuous
waves as previously thought of. **
• Half a decade later, Albert Einstein presented his fundamental paper on
special relativity with the belief that the speed of light was always
constant and independent of the movement of the observer. However,
after studying the consequences of general relativity, Einstein later
found out that the idea of an absolute time and space, which was
independent of the observer, had to be discarded in favor of a single
spacetime. Einstein also further illustrated that matter and energy
might just be characterized as aspects of the same phenomenon that
was capable of being converted from one to the other.**
Wave-particle Dilemma
• A new picture was to emerge from the perspective of the old view of
the universe. During this period, an English physicist in Cambridge, Sir
Joseph John Thomson, was the first to discover the electron,
unearthing its negative charge and the wave-like characteristics of its
particles.
• Austrian Erwin Schrodinger also made an array of equations that fully
described the probability of finding a particle in a specific place and
state.
• Likewise, his German colleague, Werner Heisenberg, later illustrated
that there was a probable uncertainty to the values of place and
momentum and soon enough, this was to be fundamental to the
overall structure of the universe. **
Harnessing the Atom
• It was New Zealander Ernest Rutherford who first illustrated that an
atom was made basically of space, comprising of a small, dense
nucleus and electrons orbiting around it. He further elaborated that
certain forms of radioactivity were present at the splitting of this
nucleus.
• Chemist Linus Pauling took advantage of the picture of an atom and
was then able to explain how atoms bonded to each other with the
use of quantum physics.
• By the early 1930s, physicists were already trying to find a variety of
ways to harness the substantial energy bonded inside the atom and in
a major event in the United States, John Robert Oppenheimer was
tasked to lead the Manhattan Project, an undertaking to produce the
first nuclear weapons ever made.
New Concept of the Universe
• In the early 20th century the nebulae were just believed to be distant
clouds of gas within our very own galaxy, the Milky Way but in a major
twist of events, the great American astronomer Edwin Hubble found out
that these nebulae were in reality, distant galaxies. The universe suddenly
became bigger and larger than previously thought of by anyone. Hubble
also made the observation that the universe was expanding in all
directions. **
• Belgian priest and physicist, Georges Lemaitre, also got into the fray by
suggesting that the universe came into being from a "primeval atom" (Big
Bang Theory).
• Another major question was solved when astronomer Fritz Zwicky
invented the term "dark matter" to elucidate why the Coma Galaxy Cluster
seemed to exude 400 times as much mass as observed from its
gravitational pull. Indeed, it became crystal clear to the scientists of the
period that there were still major discrepancies in understanding scientific
phenomena.
SUBSTANTIAL DISCOVERIES (1945-
Present)
• During the upper half of the 20th century, a variety of technology,
such as telescopes, exploded into the scene and burst into all fields of
sciences. This latest technology opened up endless possibilities for
better calculation and scientific experiments. The early 1940s saw the
emergence of the first computers, and the new science of artificial
intelligence was born. The invention of powerful and efficient
microscopes provided avenues for the first direct contact with atoms
while high capacity telescopes showed the existence of far-away
planets that had not yet been seen before. By the beginning of the
21st century, science has become an interdisciplinary activity where
cooperation and team activities are the fundamental core.
The Origin of Life
• Many scientists, curious of life's beginnings conducted experiments to
find the truth.
• In 1958 American chemists at the University of Chicago Harold
Urey and Stanley Miller, conducted an experiment to know
whether life on earth started when chemical reactions were
sparked by lightning.
• Months later, two American molecular biologists, James Watson
and Briton Francis Crick, made a key scientific contribution; they
were able to dissect the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic
acid, or DNA. Such discovery resulted in the unlocking of the
genetic code of life, which would later lead to the successful
mapping of the human genome.
• With this new knowledge regarding the genetic mechanism, American
biologist Lynn Margolis expounded on the theory that organisms
absorbed each other and continued with their existence, resulting in
the production of complex cells of all multicellular life forms.
• An American microbiologist, Michael Syvanen, was able to illustrate
how genes could have the ability to transfer from one species to
another, and thus, acquired characteristics could be passed from one
generation to another. This somehow, strengthened the view that
evolution could really have taken place.
• By late 20th century, American Craig Venter, using his own
experiments, had created artificial life by carefully outlining its DNA
on his computer.
• In Scotland, Ian Wilmut and his colleagues, after countless failures,
finally succeeded in the cloning of a sheep.
The Nature of Particles
• In the world of physics, inquiries of quantum mechanics were
further studied by American Richard Feynman, who concluded
that quantum interactions happened in terms of exchange of
"virtual" particles.
• Another scientist, Paul Dirac, was able to correctly predict the
existence of anti-matter. In the coming years, newer subatomic
particles were identified from the collisions of such particles. The
presence of these particles formed a variety of particles, from
which the standard model of particle physics came into
existence. This also resulted in the arrangement of basic particles
of nature accordance with their properties.
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