1785 Coulomb shows electrostatic and magnetic attraction follow the form of Newton's gravitational attraction.

1789 Lavoisier's new system of chemistry in Traité élémentaire de chimie.

1798 Cavendish measures the value of Newton's G. Rumford's experimental difficulties for the theory of heat.

1799 Laplace's Celestial Mechanics

1800 Volta makes a battery; Herschel discovers infrared component of the spectrum

1801 Ritter discovers the ultraviolet component of the spectrum; Young demonstrates the wave nature of light.

1803-1808 Dalton develops his atomic theory of elements.

1807 Fourier's mathematical treatment of any periodic motion as the sum of sines and cosines.

1808 Malus discovers polarized light, describing light particles as bars.

1809 Cayley publishes principles of aerodynamics.

1812 Laplace announces his famous aphorism: if he knew the mass, position, and velocity of every particle in the universe, he could calculate the past and the future.

1818 Fresnel shows that light waves are transverse, explaining not only reflection, refraction, and diffraction, but also polarization.

1819 Dulong and Petit show that specific heat is inversely proportional to atomic weight.

1820 Oersted shows that current deflects a compass (a magnetic effect); Ampère shows that two currents behave as magnets; Arago picks up iron filings with a current-carrying copper wire; Schweiger shows that deflection of a compass is proportional to the current (creating a galvanometer).

1821 Faraday demonstrates that electricity can produce motion, and proposes the ideas of "field" and "line of force" for magnets.

1822 Fourier's Analytical Theory of Heat explains heat flow and shows that equations must balance (dimensional analysis).

1823 Sturgeon produces an electromagnet by wrapping wire around a varnished iron bar.

1824 Carnot's Reflexions On the Motive Power of Fire shows that maximum efficiency is related to temperature difference in a steam engine.

1827 Ohm's law that current is proportional to voltage, and inversely proportional to resistance.

1831 Faraday shows that a magnet can make a current (leading him to transformers and generators); Redfield shows that certain big storms are cyclical.

1835 Coriolis explains cyclical storms in terms of moving masses of air (on a moving earth).

1838 Distance to nearby stars measured (general indication of the size of the universe).

1842 Doppler explains the Doppler Effect.

1847 Helmholtz's principle of the Conservation of Energy (1^st Law of Thermodynamics).

1848 W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) proposes absolute temperature scale, based on an extrapolation of decreasing energy; Fizeau shows that spectral line shift is a Doppler Effect.

1849 Fizeau and Foucault measure the speed of light (using a many-toothed gear and a mirror 5 miles away); The Roche limit proposed: a body within 2½ radii of a larger body experiences more tidal force than gravitational attraction; thus Saturn's rings cannot become moons.

1850 Clausius proposes that entropy cannot decrease (2^nd Law of Thermodynamics); Melloni shows that infrared is light waves.

1851 Foucault's pendulum proves the rotation of the earth.

1852 Joule-Thomson Effect: expanding gases consume energy.

1856 Maxwell's "On Faraday's Lines of Force", a mathematical treatment [curl vector operation] for Faraday's lines of force.

1857 Maxwell shows, from theoretical principles, that particles in Saturn's rings break up from tidal forces and are unable to coalesce again.

1858 Plucker notes that fluorescence, the glow given off by electrons in a vacuum, is affected by an electromagnetic field.

1859 Kirchoff shows that elements have characteristic spectral lines; Maxwell develops the Kinetic Theory of Gases (statistical argument).

1860 Kirchoff suggests that a black body that absorbs all light and reflect none would emit all wavelengths when heated.

1862 Maxwell's "On Physical Lines of Force", in terms of a mechanical model and mathematical treatment.

1865 Maxwell's Equations ("Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field") produce a great unification by linking electricity, magnetism, and light.

1873 Van der Waal's refined gas law.

1875 Crookes develops the radiometer (white & black panes that spin in sunlight), supporting kinetic theory.

1876 Gibbs's treatment of Chemical Thermodynamics; Goldstein shows cathode rays, from cathode to anode.

1880 Crookes shows that cathode rays are a stream of charged particles (cathode ray tube casts shadows; magnet curves the parth of the ray; rays can spin a small wheel); Pierre Curie develops piezoelectric effects (vibrating quartz has relationships between pressure, voltage, and frequency).

1881-82 Michelson uses his interferometer to measure the speed of light very accurately.

1884 Boltzmann derives Stefan's law (1879) that radiation is proportional to T⁴, from thermodynamic priniciples.

1887 Michelson-Morley experiment on the ether "wind" vector; Hertz observes the photoelectric effect.

1888 Hertz detects radio waves, predicted in theory by Maxwell's equations.

1891 Storey suggests that electricity is a stream of fundamental particles (which he calls "electrons"), or units of electricity.

1892 Lebedev measures the pressure exerted by light, as suggested by Maxwell; Fitzgerald suggests that length contracts with speed.

1894 Michelson says, in a lecture at the University of Chicago,

"While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous applicaiton of these priniciples to all the phenomena which come under our notice.... The future truths of Physical Science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."

1895 Roentgen discovers x-rays; Lorentz suggests that mass increases with speed (c the limit); Perrin confirms that cathode ray particles are negatively charged; Popov and Marconi develop antennas, making radio communication over distance feasible.

1896 Becquerel discovers that uranium is radioactive, emitting "penetrating rays"' Zeeman shows that a magnetic field affects the spectral output of a light, verifying Maxwell's theory of light.

1897 J.J. Thomson shows that the electron is a subatomic particle of very small mass; Marie Curie shows that radiation is an atomic phenomenon, not molecular; Rutherford distinguishes between alpha (+ charge, high mass) and beta (- charge, high speed) particles.

1898 M. Curie shows radioactive nature of radium.

1900 Planck proposes a quantum theory of energy in a solution of the black-body problem; Becquerel announces that beta particles are electrons.

Villard announces gamma rays, which are totally electromagnetic.

1901 P. Curie measures the (startlingly large) energy liberated by radium via radioactivity.

1902 Rutherford and Soddy categorize all radioactive elements in a decay sequence; Lenard discovers the photoelectric effect in metals.

1905 Einstein links mass and energy; Einstein explains the photoelectric effect with the quantum (light particle, or photon); Einstein explains Brownian motion, following Boltzmann's statistical distribution of molecular motions and energy distribution.

1911 Rutherford's theory of atomic structure: massive nucleus with + charge surrounded by space and moving electrons (- charge).

1913 Bohr's theory of atomic structure using quantal jumps of orbit and energy loss for the moving electrons.

Thanks for this list to Craig McConnell , California State University - Fullerton