Timeline of chemistry

This timeline of chemistry lists important works, discoveries, ideas, inventions, and experiments that significantly changed humanity's understanding of the modern science known as chemistry, defined as the scientific study of the composition of matter and of its interactions.

Known as "the central science", the study of chemistry is strongly influenced by, and exerts a strong influence on, many other scientific and technological fields.

Many historical developments that are considered to have had a significant impact upon our modern understanding of chemistry are also considered to have been key discoveries in such fields as physics, biology, astronomy, geology, and materials science.

[1] Prior to the acceptance of the scientific method and its application to the field of chemistry, it is somewhat controversial to consider many of the people listed below as "chemists" in the modern sense of the word.

However, the ideas of certain great thinkers, either for their prescience, or for their wide and long-term acceptance, bear listing here.

An image from John Dalton 's A New System of Chemical Philosophy , the first modern explanation of atomic theory .
Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
Ambix, cucurbit and retort, the alchemical implements of Zosimus c. 300, from Marcelin Berthelot , Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (3 vol., Paris, 1887–88)
Imaginative depiction of Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Latin: Geber )
Title page of The Sceptical Chymist by Robert Boyle (1627–91)
A typical chemical laboratory of the 18th century
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743–94) is considered the " Father of Modern Chemistry ".
John Dalton (1766–1844)
Structural formula of urea
Mendeleev's 1869 Periodic table
Robert A. Millikan performed the oil drop experiment.
The Bohr model of the atom
Model of two common forms of nylon
Buckminsterfullerene, C 60