| 1775 | Coulomb | proposed Coulomb's law of electrostatic forces |
| 1814 | Fraunhofer | dicovers absorption spectra in sunlight |
| 1820 | Oersted | discovered that an electric current can affect a magnet (first indication that e & m are related |
| 1827 | Ohm | proposed Ohm's law relating current to voltage |
| 1831 | Faraday | proved that electric currents could be induced by magnetic fields |
| 1843 | Joule | discovered the mechanical equivalent of heat - thus conservation of energy |
| 1864 | Maxwell | integraed electromagnetic equations into the Maxwell equations & predicted em radiation |
| 1869 | Mendeleev | periodic chart |
| 1881 | Michelson Morley | verified that the speed of light was a constant in a vacuum |
| 1884 | Boltzman | discovered entropy - a measure of disorder in statistical mechanics |
| 1886 | Becquerel | observed radioactivity |
| 1887 | Hertz | confirmed electromagnitic waves predicted by Maxwell |
| 1895 | Roentgen | dicovers X Rays |
| 1895 | Balmer | finds a formula for visible series of spectra of hydrogen |
| 1897 | Thompson | discovers the electron |
| 1900 | Plank | proposes quantization of energy to explain black body radiation |
| 1905 | Einstein | proposes quantized EM unit of photon |
| 1905 | Einstein | proposes special relativity - four dimensional space-time |
| 1908 | Perrin | determines Avagadro's number |
| 1909 | Rutherford | proposes the model of the atom with nucleus |
| 1913 | Bohr | proposes first quantum model of hydrogen atom - explains spectra |
| 1914 | Moseley | uses X ray spectroscopy to relate atomic number to charge on nucleus |
| 1916 | Einstein | proposes general relativity - integrates acceleration & gravity theory w curved space-time |
| 1923 | Compton | shows photons scatter like particles |
| 1924 | de Broglie | proposes all particles have wave nature |
| 1925 | Pauli | exclusion principle - no two electrons can be in the same state at the same time |
| 1926 | Schrodinger | Formulates wave equation for quantum theory |
| 1926 | Goudsmit & Uhlenbeck | proposed electron spin |
| 1927 | Heisenberg | formulates uncertainy principle (and matrix theory of quantum mechanics) |
| 1927 | Davissson & Germer | observe electron diffraction confinrming wave nature of particles |
| 1930 | Dirac | formulated relativistic equation for quantum mechanics & predicted the positron (antimatter) |
| 1932 | Chadwick | confirms Rutherfords hypothesis that the neucleus contains a neutral particle (neutron) |
| 1932 | Anderson | discovered Dirac's predicted particle, the positron, in cosmic rays |
| 1934 | Pauli | predicted the neutrino |
| 1932 | Yukawa | predicted the pion |
| 1942 | Fermi | theory of beta decay of nucleus & first atomic reactor (chain reaction) - also fermions |
| 1943 | von Neuman | invented the stored program computer (also foundations of quantum theory) |
| 1947 | Powell | discovered the pion as predicted by Yukawa |
| 1948 | Feynman, Schwinger, Tomonaga | theory of quantum electrodynamics |
| 1948 | Shannon | discovered concept of information (negative entropy) in computer systems |
| 1954 | Reines | discovered the neutrino |
| 1955 | Segre & Chamberlain | discover anti proton |
| 1955 | Yang | proposed non-conservation of parity |
| 1967 | Glashow, Salam, Weinberg | integrate electromagnetic and weak interactions |