WHO MAD THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY ABOUT ATOMS?
I’d credit John Dalton with the first modern physical evidence: In 1803, English instructor and natural philosopher John Dalton used the concept of atoms to explain why elements always react in a ratio of small whole numbers — the law of multiple proportions — and why certain gases dissolve better in water than others. He proposed that each element consists of atoms of a single, unique type, and that these atoms can join together to form chemical compounds. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom JAN, before Dalton philosophers wondered about atomic theory but had no real evidence. Dalton’s contribution is honored by naming a mass unit after him (1 Dalton = 1 atomic mass unit = mass of proton or neutron.) A century later Albert Einstein calculated how atomic theory could exactly explain Brownian motion. I suppose you could also argue for Lavoisier, who in 1789 proposed naming elements as basic substances that could not be further broken down by the methods of chemistry — anticipating a
Howdy, Go here for the full scoop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom The earliest references to the concept of atoms date back to ancient India in the 6th century BCE. The Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools developed elaborate theories of how atoms combined into more complex objects (first in pairs, then trios of pairs). The references to atoms in the West emerged a century later from Leucippus whose student, Democritus, systemized his views. In approximately 450 BCE, Democritus coined the term átomos (Greek: ἄτομος), which means “uncuttable” or “the smallest indivisible particle of matter”, i.e., something that cannot be divided. Although the Indian and Greek concepts of the atom were based purely on philosophy, modern science has retained the name coined by Democritus.
