Thales (624-546 BCE)

He decided that, fundamentally, everything

must be made of the same thing – much as
today we believe that all matter is made
of atoms. His idea was that in its most
fundamental form, all matter is water. It took
about 200 years for Thales' idea to be
transformed by his compatriot Democritus
into “all matter is atoms.”
Thales of Miletus lived in Ancient Greece. He
was the first scientist in history.
Thales looked for patterns in nature to
explain the way the world worked rather than
believing everything happened only because
one of the Greek gods commanded it. He
replaced superstitions with science.
He was the first person to use deductive
logic to find new results in geometry and,
through requiring proof of theorems, took
mathematics to a new, higher level.
In general what we know of him was written
hundreds of years after he lived, by Aristotle
for example.
When pronouncing his name, we say thail-
eez, emphasizing the first syllable.
There may have been other scientists before
Thales, but if there were, we do not know
their names.
Anaximander (born 610 BCE,
Miletus [now in Turkey]—died 546 BCE),
Greek philosopher who was the first to
develop a cosmology, or systematic
philosophical view of the world.
Anaximander was the author of the first
surviving lines of Western philosophy. He
speculated and argued about "the
Boundless" as the origin of all that is. He also
worked on the fields of what we now call
geography and biology. Moreover,
Anaximander was the first speculative
astronomer. He originated the world-picture
of the open universe, which replaced the
closed universe of the celestial vault.
His work will always remain truncated, like
the mutilated and decapitated statue that
has been found at the market-place of
Miletus and that bears his name.
Nevertheless, by what we know of him, we
may say that he was one of the greatest
minds that ever lived. By speculating and
arguing about the "Boundless" he was the
first metaphysician. By drawing a map of the
world he was the first geographer. But above
all, by boldly speculating about the universe
he broke with the ancient image of the
celestial vault and became the discoverer of
the Western world-picture.
Anaximenes (d. 528 B.C.E.)
is best known for his doctrine that air is
the source of all things. In this way, he
differed with his predecessors like
Thales, who held that water is the source
of all things, and Anaximander, who
thought that all things came from an
unspecified boundless stuff.
According to the surviving sources on his
life, Anaximenes flourished in the mid
6th century B.C.E. and died about 528.
He is the third philosopher of the
Milesian School of philosophy, so named
because like Thales and Anaximander,
Anaximenes was an inhabitant of
Miletus, in Ionia (ancient
Greece). Theophrastus notes that
Anaximenes was an associate, and
possibly a student, of Anaximander's.
Anaximenes is best known for his
doctrine that air is the source of all
things. In this way, he differed with his
predecessors like Thales, who held that
water is the source of all things, and
Anaximander, who thought that all
things came from an unspecified
boundless stuff.
Heraclitus also spelled Heracleitus,
(born c. 540 BCE, Ephesus, Anatolia [now
Selçuk, Turkey]—died c. 480), Greek
philosopher remembered for his cosmology,
in which fire forms the basic material
principle of an orderly universe. Little is
known about his life, and the one book he
apparently wrote is lost. His views survive in
the short fragments quoted and attributed to
him by later authors.
A Greek philosopher of the late 6th century
BCE, Heraclitus criticizes his
predecessors and contemporaries for
their failure to see the unity in
experience. He claims to announce an
everlasting Word (Logos) according to
which all things are one, in some sense.
Opposites are necessary for life, but they
are unified in a system of balanced
exchanges. The world itself consists of a
law-like interchange of elements,
symbolized by fire. Thus the world is not
to be identified with any particular
substance, but rather with an ongoing
process governed by a law of change. The
underlying law of nature also manifests
itself as a moral law for human beings.
Heraclitus is the first Western
philosopher to go beyond physical theory
in search of metaphysical foundations
and moral applications.
Empedocles (c. 490 BC – c 430 BC.)
devised the theory that all substances are made
of four pure, indestructible elements: air, fire,
water, and earth. ... Thales, the first scientist in
Ancient Greece (and quite possibly the world)
had proposed about 100 years earlier that a
single element – water – made everything.
Empedocles lived 2500 years ago, soon after the
dawn of scientific thought in Ancient Greece.
In his remarkable life Empedocles devised a
theory of natural selection; proposed that
everything in existence is made of different
combinations of four elements: air, fire, wind and
earth; recognized that air has weight; said that
the speed of light is finite; and made a statement
equivalent to the modern law that mass is
conserved in chemical reactions.
Empedocles (of Acagras in Sicily) was a
philosopher and poet: one of the most important
of the philosophers working before Socrates (the
Presocratics), and a poet of outstanding ability
and of great influence upon later poets such
as Lucretius. His works On
Nature and Purifications (whether they are two
poems or only one – see below) exist in more
than 150 fragments. He has been regarded
variously as a materialist physicist, a shamanic
magician, a mystical theologian, a healer, a
democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud.
To him is attributed the invention of the four-
element theory of matter (earth, air, fire, and
water), one of the earliest theories of particle
physics, put forward seemingly to rescue the
phenomenal world from the static monism
of Parmenides. Empedocles’ world-view is of a
cosmic cycle of eternal change, growth and
decay, in which two personified cosmic forces,
Love and Strife, engage in an eternal battle for
supremacy. In psychology and ethics
Empedocles was a follower of Pythagoras, hence
a believer in the transmigration of souls, and
hence also a vegetarian. He claims to be
a daimôn, a divine or potentially divine being,
who, having been banished from the immortals
gods for ‘three times countless years’ for
committing the sin of meat-eating and forced to
suffer successive reincarnations in an
purificatory journey through the different orders
of nature and elements of the cosmos, has now
achieved the most perfect of human states and
will be reborn as an immortal. He also claims
seemingly magical powers including the ability
to revive the dead and to control the winds and
rains.
Alexander the Great commonly
known as Alexander the Great, was a king of
the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and
a member of the Argead dynasty. He was
born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his
father Philip II to the throne at the age of 20.
(21 July 356 BCE – 10 or 11 June 323 BCE),
was the son of King Philip II of Macedon.
He became king upon his father’s death in
336 BCE and went on to conquer most of the
known world of his day. He is known as 'the
great' both for his military genius and his
diplomatic skills in handling the various
populaces of the regions he conquered. He is
further recognized for
spreading Greek culture, language, and
thought from Greece throughout Asia
Minor, Egypt,
and Mesopotamia to India and thus
initiating the era of the "Hellenistic World".
Aristotle
450 B.C. Aristotle did not believe in
the atomic theory and he taught so
otherwise. He thought that all materials on
Earth were not made of atoms, but of the
four elements, Earth, Fire, Water, and Air.
He believed all substances were made of
small amounts of these four elements of
matter.
Aristotle contributed to modern atomic
theory by introducing alchemy, an ideology
that chemists eventually rebelled
against. Aristotle argued alchemy above
observation and scientific research. His beliefs
held that the world was made of elements
endlessly divisible.
Many chemists and philosophers argued
Aristotle and believed in atomic theory.
Democritus consistently challenged Aristotle
and insisted that the elements were made of a
variety of shapes and sizes. He also believed
that this is what gave the different elements
their attributes. The notion that the atom is an
element broken down to its smallest proportion
was in complete opposition to Aristotle's
beliefs. Instead, Alchemy, held that a God, or
gods, could divide an element infinitely.
Leucippus of Miletus
,1st Theory of Atomism. Leucippus or
Leukippos was the first Greek to develop the
theory of atomism — the idea that
everything is composed entirely of various
imperishable,
indivisible elements called atoms — which
was elaborated in far greater detail by his
pupil and successor, Democritus.
 (flourished 5th century BC, probably
at Miletus, on the west coast of Asia Minor),
Greek philosopher credited by Aristotle and
by Theophrastus with having originated the
theory of atomism. It has been difficult to
distinguish his contribution from that of his
most famous pupil, Democritus. Only
fragments of Leucippus’ writings remain, but
two works believed to have been written by
him are The Great World System and On the
Mind. His theory stated that matter
is homogeneous but consists of an infinity of
small indivisible particles. These atoms are
constantly in motion, and through their
collisions and regroupings form
various compounds. A cosmos is formed by
the collision of atoms that gather together
into a “whirl,” and the drum-shaped Earth is
located in the centre of man’s cosmos.
Democritus greatest contribution to
modern science was arguably
the atomic theory he elucidated. ...
Everything is composed of “atoms”, which
are physically, but not geometrically,
indivisible. Between atoms, there lies empty
space. Atoms are indestructible
As the philosopher Nietzsche famously said
“He who would learn to fly one day must first
learn to stand and walk and run and climb
and dance; one cannot fly into flying.” This is
certainly true when it comes to humanity’s
understanding of the universe, something
which has evolved over many thousands of
years and been the subject of ongoing
discovery.
And along the way, many names stand out
as examples of people who achieved
breakthroughs and helped lay the
foundations of our modern understanding.
One such person is Democritus, an ancient
Greek philosopher who is viewed by many
as being the “father of modern science”. This
is due to his theory of universe that is made
up of tiny “atoms”, which bears a striking
resemblance to modern atomic theory.
Though he is typically viewed as one of
Greece’s many pre-Socratic natural
philosopher, many historians have argued
that he is more rightly classified as a
scientist, at least when compared to his
contemporaries. There has also been
significant controversy – particularly in
Germany during the 19th century – over
whether or not Democritus deserves credit
for atomic theory.
This argument is based on the relationship
Democritus had with contemporary
philosopher Leucippus, who is renowned for
sharing his theory about atoms with him.
However, their theories came down to a
different basis, a distinction that allows
Democritus to be given credit for a theory
that would go on to become a staple of the
modern scientific tradition.
What is Alchemy?
Alchemy is an ancient practice shrouded in
mystery and secrecy. Its practitioners
mainly sought to turn lead into gold, a quest
that has captured the imaginations of
people for thousands of years. However,
the goals of alchemy went far beyond
simply creating some golden nuggets.
Alchemy was rooted in a complex spiritual
worldview in which everything around us
contains a sort of universal spirit, and
metals were believed not only to be alive
but also to grow inside the Earth. When a
base, or common, metal such as lead was
found, it was thought to simply be a
spiritually and physically immature form of
higher metals such as gold. To the
alchemists, metals were not the unique
substances that populate the Periodic Table,
but instead the same thing in different
stages of development or refinement on
their way to spiritual perfection.
As James Randi notes in his "Encyclopedia
of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the
Occult and Supernatural," "Beginning about
the year 100 and reaching its flower in
medieval times, alchemy was an art based
partly upon experimentation and partly
upon magic. Early investigators of natural
processes centered their search on a
mythical substance they knew as
philosopher's stone, which was supposed to
possess many valuable attributes such as
the power to heal, to prolong life, and to
change base metals into precious metal —
such as gold." (This "philosopher's stone"
was not a literal stone but instead a wax,
liquid, or powder that held magical powers.)
J.J. Thomson

In 1897, J.J. Thomson discovered the

electron by experimenting with a
Crookes, or cathode ray, tube. He
demonstrated that cathode rays were
negatively charged. In addition, he also
studied positively charged particles in
neon gas.
ERNEST RUTHERFORD

Ernest Rutherford (1871 - 1937)

discovered alpha and beta rays, set
forth the laws of radioactive decay, and
identified alpha particles as helium
nuclei. Most importantly, he postulated
the nuclear structure of the atom.
HENRY MOSELEY

Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (/ˈmoʊzli/;

23 November 1887 – 10 August 1915) was
an English physicist,
whose contribution to the science of
physics was the justification from physical
laws of the previous empirical and
chemical concept of the atomic number.
NIELS BOHR

In 1913, Niels Bohr proposed a theory for

the hydrogen atom based on quantum
theory that energy is transferred only in
certain well defined quantities. Electrons
should move around the nucleus but only in
prescribed orbits. When jumping from one
orbit to another with lower energy, a light
quantum is emitted.