Timeline of scientific thought

chronological period	Scientific thought
3rd millennium BC	Sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system originated with the ancient Sumerians
4th century BCE	Axiomatic science based on the logico-deductive method is founded owing to Euclid's Elements Publication which is at the root of formal system.
3rd century BCE	Eratosthenes: calculated the size of the earth and its distance to the sun and to the moon
150s BCE	Seleucus of Seleucia: discovery of tides being caused by the moon...
5th century CE	Hindu-Arabic numeral system (decimal) begins to be used
630	Abiyun al-Bitriq : Early astronomical instruments
721-815	Jabir ibn Hayyan : Father of chemistry. Did influential work on chemistry and chemical apparatus
776-869	Al-Jahiz : Very first scientist to discuss on natural selection in his "Book of Animal"
780-850	Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi : Foundation of modern Algebra and Algorithm
806	Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Fazārī : Invented first astrolabe for navigation
801-873	Al-Kindi : Father of cryptography, cryptanalysis and frequency analysis
858-929	Al-Battani : Produced many Trigonometric formulas, Calculation of the values for the precession of the equinoxes (54.5" per year, or 1° in 66 years) and the obliquity of the ecliptic (23° 35')
859	Fatima al-Fihri : Founded world's first & oldest degree granting university- "University of al-Qarawiyyin"
973-1050	Al-Beruni : Foundation of Chronology and Indology
10th century CE	Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes): refutation of Aristotelian classical elements and Galenic humorism; and discovery of measles and smallpox, and kerosene and distilled petroleum
1021	Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics: First accurate vision theory, Father of scientific method
1020s	Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine : Standard medical textbook in europe for 600 years
1027s	Avicenna's Book of Healing :First accurate description of Newton's First Law of Motion
1048-1131	Omar Khayyam : Geometric Algebra, a precursor to Descartes' Analytic Geometry; Solution of cubic equations
1058-1111	Al-Ghazali : Logic, Philosophy, Business Ethics
1121	Al-Khazini: variation of gravitation and gravitational potential energy at a distance; the decrease of air density with altitude
1135-1213	Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī : Invented linear Astrolabe; First to propose the idea of a mathematical function
12th century	Ibn Bajjah (Avempace): discovery of reaction (precursor to Newton's third law of motion)
12th century	Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi (Nathanel): relationship between force and acceleration (a vague foreshadowing of a fundamental law of classical mechanics and a precursor to Newton's second law of motion)
1206	Ismail al-Jazari Inventor of classic Automata, Segmental Gear, Crankshaft, Camshaft that drives modern world
12th century	Averroes: relationship between force, work and kinetic energy
1220–1235	Robert Grosseteste: rudimentals of the scientific method (see also: Roger Bacon)
1242	Ibn al-Nafis: pulmonary circulation and circulatory system
1247	Nasir al-Din al-Tusi: Invention of famous Tusi Couple
13th Century	Ibn al-Shatir: Production of a new lunar model
13th century	Theodoric of Freiberg: Correct explanation of rainbow phenomenon
13th century	William of Saint-Cloud: pioneering use of camera obscura to view solar eclipses
Before 1327	William of Ockham: Occam's Razor
1332-1406	Ibn Khaldun Pioneer of histeriography, sociology, demography and economics
1429	Ulugh Beg : astronomy-related mathematics, trigonometry and spherical geometry
1460	Ali Qushji : Development of astronomical physics
1494	Luca Pacioli: first codification of the Double-entry bookkeeping system, which slowly developed in previous centuries
1430-1500	Ahmad ibn Mājid : Navigator and Cartographer; Guided Vasco da Gama to complete the first all water trade route between Europe and India
1543	Copernicus: heliocentric model
1550	Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf : Invented steam turbine -today known as Steam Jacks
1570s	Tycho Brahe: detailed astronomical observations
1600	William Gilbert: Earth's magnetic field
1609	– Johannes Kepler: first two laws of planetary motion
1610	Galileo Galilei: Sidereus Nuncius: telescopic observations
1614	John Napier: use of logarithms for calculation
1628	William Harvey: Blood circulation
17th century	René Descartes creates Cartesian coordinate system — allowing reference to a point in space as a set of numbers, and allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system (and conversely, shapes to be described as equations).
17th Century	Baruch Spinoza – opposed Cartesian mind body dualism. He considered the nature of reality of physical and mental worlds to be the same. Spinoza was determinist and believed that even human behaviour is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know and accept that we are determined.
1665	Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first peer reviewed scientific journal published.
1669	Nicholas Steno: Proposes that fossils are organic remains embedded in layers of sediment, basis of stratigraphy
1675	Anton van Leeuwenhoek: Observes Microorganisms by Microscope
1675	Leibniz developed Infinitesimal calculus and its widely used mathematical notation. Later he presented the theory of Monads and developed the Binary number system which is elemental for modern digital computing. His Law of Continuity and Transcendental Law of Homogeneity found mathematical implementation only in the 20th century.
1687	Newton: Laws of motion, law of universal gravitation, basis for classical physics
1735	Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of his major work Systema Naturae. The tenth edition of this book is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature. In 1753 he published Species Plantarum which is the primary starting point of plant nomenclature as it exists today.
1763	Bayes' theorem named for Thomas Bayes who first suggested using the theorem to update beliefs was significantly edited and updated by Richard Price after the death of Thomas Bayes and read at the Royal Society. This would later serve as foundation of Bayesian inference in statistics
1767	James Denham-Steuart: used the term supply and demand in his on economics in Inquiry into the Principles of Political economy, published in 1767. Later, Adam Smith used it in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, and David Ricardo titled one chapter of his 1817 work Principles of Political Economy and Taxation "On the Influence of Demand and Supply on Price".
1778	Antoine Lavoisier (and Joseph Priestley): discovery of oxygen leading to end of Phlogiston theory
1796	Georges Cuvier: Establishes extinction as a fact
1800	Alessandro Volta: discovers electrochemical series and invents the battery
1805	John Dalton: Atomic Theory in (Chemistry)
1859	Charles Darwin published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his book On the Origin of Species
1866	Gregor Mendel published his work which demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.
1869	Dmitri Mendeleev: Periodic table
1877	Ludwig Boltzmann: Statistical definition of entropy
1887	Michelson–Morley experiment was performed in 1887 by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley to detect the relative motion of matter through the stationary luminiferous aether ("aether wind").
1890s	Santiago Ramón y Cajal discovered the axonal growth cone, and provided the definitive evidence for what would later be known as "neuron theory", experimentally demonstrating that the relationship between nerve cells was not one of continuity, but rather of contiguity. "Neuron theory" stands as the foundation of modern neuroscience.
1899–1900	Sigmund Freud developed his theory of the unconscious mind and began his works on psychodynamic theory and psychosexual development of human organism. He proposed that human thought and behavior is complex process of unconscious processes in the mind
1900	Max Planck: Planck's law of black body radiation, basis for quantum theory
1905	Albert Einstein: theory of special relativity, explanation of Brownian motion, and photoelectric effect
1906	Walther Nernst: Third law of thermodynamics
1911	Ernest Rutherford: Atomic nucleus
1911	Oskar Heinroth rediscovered the phenomenon of psychological Imprinting, reported by Douglas Spalding in 1877. It was extensively worked on in the 20th century by Nikolaas Tinbergen, Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz who demonstrated a "critical period" and other aspects concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals, earning them a Nobel prize in 1973.
1915	Albert Einstein: theory of general relativity
1924	Wolfgang Pauli: quantum Pauli exclusion principle
1925	– Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger equation (Quantum mechanics)
1927	– Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty principle (Quantum mechanics)
1927	Georges Lemaître: Theory of the Big Bang
1928	Paul Dirac: Dirac equation (Quantum mechanics)
1929	– Edwin Hubble: Hubble's law of the expanding universe
1930s	Keynes introduced Keynesian revolution, overturning neoclassical economics that held free markets would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment, as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. Keynes instead argued that aggregate demand determined the overall level of economic activity, and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment.
1931	Friedrich Hayek elaborated the "Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle". He argued that the business cycle resulted from the central bank's inflationary credit expansion and its transmission over time, leading to a capital misallocation caused by the artificially low interest rates.
1931	Kurt Gödel stated the incompleteness theorem which states that for any self-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (for example Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the naturals that cannot be proved from the axioms.
1934	James Chadwick: Discovery of the neutron
1934	Karl Popper emphasized the idea of falsifiability as the criterion demarcating science from non-science.
1937	Alan Turing: Introduced the mathematical concept of a Turing machine
1937	Kurt Lewin: on the basis of Herbert Blumer's interactionist perspective, suggested that neither nature (inborn tendencies) nor nurture (how experiences in life shape individuals) alone can account for individuals' behavior and personalities, but rather that both nature and nurture interact to shape each person. This is expressed as Lewin's Equation for behavior B=ƒ(P,E). Earlier he coined the notion of genidentity,
1940s	Benjamin Lee Whorf brought focus to the Principle of linguistic relativity which implies that the structure of a language affects the weltanschauung or worldview of the speakers of the language and their cognition of the world. Whorf's works tried to show that there is relationship between language and thought. The idea was introduced earlier by Humboldt and then worked on by Edward Sapir in the 1920s.
1942	Joseph Schumpeter introduced the idea creative destruction, sometimes known as "Schumpeter's gale" in his work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), where in he described the way in which capitalist economic development arises out of the destruction of some prior economic order.
1943	Oswald Avery proves that DNA is the genetic material of the chromosome
1943	Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch wrote the seminal paper entitled "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" (1943) and proposed the first mathematical model of a neural network. Their work also presented ideas drawn upon the work of Leibniz with later implications for cellular automata.
1944	John von Neumann and Stanislaw Ulam: introduced the mathematical idea of a cellular automata. This set the foundations for the later discipline of complexity science and agent based modeling
1944	John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern: wrote the seminal book Theory of games and economic behavior and began the interdisciplinary research field of game theory
1947	William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invent the first transistor
1948	Claude Elwood Shannon & Warren Weaver: 'A mathematical theory of communication' a seminal paper in Information theory.
1948	Norbert Wiener: introduced the concept of Cybernetics in his work Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.
1948	Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Freeman Dyson: Quantum electrodynamics
1950	Ludwig von Bertalanffy began General systems theory with his publication "An Outline of General System Theory" in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Vol. 1 (No. 2)
1950s	Kenneth Arrow, Gérard Debreu and Lionel W. McKenzie introduced the modern conception of general equilibrium in economics. Gerard Debreu presents this model in Theory of Value (1959). Though an earlier form of general equilibrium was presented by Leon Walras in 1874.
1950s	Leon Festinger developed the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and Social Comparison Theory, and discovered nature of the role of propinquity in the formation of social ties while also making other contributions to the study of social networks, psychological social psychology and sociological social psychology.
1951	John Bowlby developed attachment theory which states that human individuals, especially as children, needs to develop a stable and long lasting relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Relationships later in life are built on this primary foundation. The theory states that in human evolution, attachment behaviour increased the chances of survival.
1952	Jonas Salk: developed and tested first polio vaccine
1953	Crick and Watson: helical structure of DNA, basis for molecular biology
1953	Anatol Rapoport introduced mathematical models in the study of information transmission in human interaction and for the management of conflict and cooperation in human life
1953	Ludwig Wittgenstein: wrote his seminal work Philosophical Investigations in which he stated that conceptual confusions surrounding language use are at the root of most philosophical problems.
1954	Jean Piaget: elaborated on Genetic epistemology and the theory of cognitive development in his work "La construction du réel chez l'enfant" (The construction of reality in the child).
1956	Frank Harary and Dorwin Cartwright mathematically formalized generalizations of Fritz Heider's psychological theory of cognitive balance to give formalization of interpersonal network patterns. This laid the foundations for micro level social network analysis and small group research and group dynamics research in sociology and sociological social psychology
1957	Noam Chomsky: wrote Syntactic Structures which laid the foundation for the idea of transformational grammar. He also introduced the idea of poverty of the stimulus which states that natural language grammar is unlearnable given the relatively limited data available to children learning a language, and therefore that this knowledge is supplemented with some sort of innate linguistic capacity. A tenet of generative grammar.
1957	Herbert Simon: coined the term Bounded rationality in psychology as an alternative basis for the mathematical modeling of decision making, as used in economics and related disciplines which views rationality as a maximization process as described in rational choice theory. Instead, "bounded rationality" views rationality as a Satisficing process. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978.
1958	William Phillips, introduced Phillips curve in economic theory. He described the observation of an inverse relationship between money wage changes and unemployment in the British economy over the period examined. In 1960 Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow took Phillips' work and made explicit the link between inflation and unemployment: when inflation was high, unemployment was low, and vice versa.
1960s	Paul Ekman conducted seminal research on the specific biological correlates of specific emotions, demonstrating the universality and discreteness of emotions in a Darwinian approach. This served as one of the basis for E. O. Wilson's works on Sociobiology in the 1970s and later helped in the emergence of the approach of Evolutionary Psychology in the 1990s through the work of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby
1962	Thomas Kuhn stated that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in continuous way; which open up new approaches to understanding that scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community
1963	Stanley Milgram first published a series of experiments now known as Milgram experiment which demonstrated how people showed obedience to orders in a social system when the orders were given by authority figures even when people were asked to perform actions against their wish and conscience. The studies were done in order to explain conformity and obedience in society as seen during the Holocaust.
1963	Lawrence Morley, Fred Vine, and Drummond Matthews: Paleomagnetic stripes in ocean crust as evidence of plate tectonics (Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis).
1964	Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig: postulate quarks leading to the standard model
1968	Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson 1968 experimentally demonstrated Self fulfilling prophecy in social relationships through their field experiment which showed that if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from some children, then those children did indeed show that enhancement. This is also known as Late bloomers effect
1968–1970	Terry Winograd made the artificial intelligence and natural language processing program SHRDLU that was concerned with the problem of providing a computer with sufficient "understanding" to be able to use natural language.
1969	German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse published his book Calculating Space, proposing that the physical laws of the universe are discrete by nature, and that the entire universe is the output of a deterministic computation on a single cellular automaton; "Zuse's Theory" became the foundation of the field of study called digital physics
1969	invention of Internet
1970	George Akerlof elaborated the idea of economic activity under asymmetric information. He described information asymmetry, which occurs when the seller knows more about a product than the buyer. Later, Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz jointly received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 for their work on economic behavior under asymmetric information.
1970	John Horton Conway made the computer program Game of Life, also known simply as Life, a cellular automaton in which its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. The game of life simulates the rise, fall and alterations of a society of living organisms.
1970s	Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman published series of discoveries on the psychology of human judgment and decision making describing the pervasive nature of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk in everyday life.
1972	Paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould published a landmark paper developing this theory and called it punctuated equilibria
1972	Michael D. Cohen, James G. March and Johan Olsen proposed the Garbage can model of organizational decision making. They published the model along with a computer code. Earlier James G. March presented the Behavioral theory of the firm in 1963 and made a compendium of basic Organizational studies, Management science, and organizational behavior in his edition "A Handbook of Organizations" (1965).
1973	Mark Granovetter published his seminal work in modern sociology and social network theory on the spread of information in social networks known as "The Strength of Weak Ties" describing how weak ties enable reaching populations and audiences that are not accessible via strong ties.
1977	Voyager program launched two unmanned space missions, the probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to study planetary systems
1981–1984	Robert Axelrod and W. D. Hamilton described the evolution of cooperation between cognitive entities and gave a mathematical and computational model describing the phenomena
1986	David Rumelhart and James McClelland described the idea of Parallel Distributed Processing in modeling human cognition in psychology. They made mathematical and computational models of psychological information processing and described computer simulations of perception, giving testable models of neural information processing and introducing Connectionism.
1987	John C. Turner and Michael Hogg along with other colleagues developed the Self categorization theory which gives a psychological theory for dynamics in group processes. It states that the self is not the foundational aspect of cognition, rather the self is a product of cognitive processes that occur in social processes. Earlier John Turner worked with Henri Tajfel (1979) on the precursor theory Social identity theory.
1988	The concept of a Quantum cellular automata was introduced thus advancing quantum computation and quantum computer
1970s–1988	Marvin Minsky & Seymour Papert started developing what came to be called The Society of Mind theory. They state how intelligence could be a product of the interaction of non-intelligent parts. Minsky says that the biggest source of ideas about the theory came from his work in trying to create a machine that uses a robotic arm, a video camera, and a computer to build with children's blocks.
1988	Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza reconstructed human evolution and migration patterns in human history in his work in population genetics. He claimed to show a strong association between language families and genetic trees of the same populations, proposing for genetic–linguistic coevolution.
1989–1990	Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989, and on 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet.
1996	Joshua M. Epstein along with Robert Axtell developed the first large scale agent-based computational model, the Sugarscape, to explore the role of social phenomenon such as seasonal migrations, pollution, sexual reproduction, combat, and transmission of disease and even culture. With this work Epstein laid the foundation for what he later called as Generative social science
1997	Roslin Institute: Dolly the sheep was cloned.
1998	Gerson Goldhaber and Saul Perlmutter observed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating
2000	Alison Gopnik and Andrew N. Meltzoff and Patricia K. Kuhl stated that the same mechanisms used by scientists to develop scientific theories are used by children to develop causal models of their environment. They state that the cognitive development of children in early life is made possible by three factors: innate knowledge, advanced learning ability, and the evolved ability of parents to teach their offspring.
2001	The first draft of the human genome is completed.
2002	Ray Jackendoff published his theory of conceptual semantics a comprehensive theory on the foundations of language, in the monograph (2002): Foundations of Language. Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. Earlier he worked with Fred Lerdahl, on musical cognition, presenting a Generative theory of tonal music.
2002	Daniel Wegner published his book stating that the experience of free will is an illusion. Wegner conducted a series of experiments in which people experience an illusion of control, feeling that their free will shapes events when actually it were determined by someone else. According to Wegner the fact that this illusion of free will can be created shows that it is an illusion and that it is "the mind's best trick".
2009	The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Life Sciences Corporation completed making a draft sequencing of the genome of the closest human relative the Neanderthal
2010	J. Craig Venter Institute creates the first synthetic bacterial cell.
2011	a team led by Shinji Nishimoto made break through in Thought identification when they partially reconstructed visual images from only brain recordings of neural activity of volunteers who were seeing actual visual pictures or images.
2012	Higgs Boson is discovered at CERN (confirmed to 99.999% certainty)