1965The first Young Scientist Exhibition is held in the Mansion House in Dublin.

1959 Richard Feynman proposes the possibility of nano scale machines.

1924de Broglie’s theory that matter has a wave-like nature.

1926 Schrodinger’s quantum mechanics wave equation.

1927Heisenberg publishes the uncertainty principle.

1934 Bernal uses X-ray photographs to uncover the molecular structure of protein crystals.

1958Semiconductor technology is born with the fabrication of silicon chips.

1960First laser patented.

1983w and z bosons (elementary particles) detected at CERN.

1992Cosmic microwave background observed supporting Lemaître’s Big Bang Theory.

1997 Quantum bit (qubit) teleportation is demonstrated at Innsbruck, Austria.

2007Attosecond laser pulse used to observe electron tunnelling.

2012 Highest-energy particle collisions generated at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN.

1928 Dirac predicts antimatter.

1932 Walton and Cockcroft split the atom, the basis of nuclear power.

1942 Fermi achieves the first self-sustaining fission chain reaction. 1951

Walton and Cockcroft are awarded the Nobel Prize for splitting the atom.

1964 Bell’s theorem proves the non-locality results that are predicted by quantum mechanics.

1981 Superstring theory proposed.

1981 Scanning Tunnel Microscope invented.

1990 Hubble telescope launched. It is the first space based optical telescope.

1994 Top quark detected at Fermilab.

2005 Planning begins for world’s largest optical telescope (40m mirror) in Chile, the European Extremely Large Telescope.

2010 Quantum teleportation achieved over 16 kilometres.

1969 First man on the moon.

1976Viking Mission — first landing of a craft on Mars.

1989The Berlin Wall comes down.

2011World population passes seven billion.

1974 Seán MacBride wins Nobel Peace Prize.

1976 Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan win Nobel Peace Prize.

1982 Ranulph Fiennes and Charles R. Burton become the first people to cross the Arctic Ocean in a single season.

1998 John Hume and David Trimble win Nobel Peace Prize.

1962Nobel Prize awarded to Crick, Watson and Wilkins for discovery of double helix structure of DNA.

1973First call on a hand held mobile phone, using microwave technology.

1978The first successful birth by in-vitro fertilisation, baby Louise Brown is born in London.

1985 Hole in ozone layer over Antarctica identified. 1991

The World Wide Web (www) is launched by CERN.

1996First cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, born.

2003 Complete expression of the human genome revealed.

2012 Dublin is European City of Science.

1954First organ transplant (kidney), is performed in the USA.

1952 Rosalind Franklin produces X-ray diffraction image of DNA.

1960 The first contraceptive pill is licensed for sale in the USA.

1972 First patent for MRI machine.

1977 Smallpox eradicated due to vaccination.

1988 Table tennis becomesan Olympic sport.

1983John McEnroe is the first professional player to use a carbon fibre tennis racquet.

1997Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM, wins a six-game match against world champion Garry Kasparov.

2009 Swimsuits made of pure polyurethane are developed to help swimmers to glide through water faster.

2010 Katie Taylor wins a gold medal, her third, at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in Barbados.

2011 Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy wins the U.S. Open.

1973Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, based on his experiences in a Soviet forced labour camp, is published in the West.

1968The film 2001: A Space Odyssey, produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, is released.

2009The Samuel Beckett Bridge, a footbridge in the shape of a harp, is erected on the Liffey in Dublin.

1990Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ is rediscovered in Dublin

1937Picasso paints Guernica.

1962The Beatles first single, Love Me Do, is released.

1929 Excavation of Petra, Jordan.

1931 The Empire State building opens.

1937 Disney release Snow White the first full-colour animated film.

1950 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, first of the Chronicles of Narnia, published.

1962 Andy Warhol paints Campbell’s Soup Cans.

1969 Samuel Beckett wins Nobel Prize for Literature.

1973 Sydney Opera House completed.

1995 Seamus Heaney wins Nobel Prize for Literature.

2003 The Spire of Dublin is installed on O’Connell Street.

1968George Best named European Footballer of the Year.

1970 World Series of Poker begins in Las Vegas.

1972 The Magnavox Odyssey, first video game console, released.

1978 Polish woman, Chojnowska-Liskiewicz, is the first woman to sail single-handed around the world.

1922Banting and Best discover insulin.

1928Fleming discovers the antibiotic effect of Penicillin.

1925John Logie Baird successfully transmits the first television picture.

1929 Kathleen Lonsdale, crystallographer, discovers structure of benzene ring.

1945 The first atom bomb isdropped on Hiroshima.

1955In Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to obey a bus driver’s order to give up her seat for a white passenger.

1963John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of USA, is assassinated.

1966Mao Zedong starts “Cultural Revolution” in China.

1953Hillary and Norgay reach the summit of Mount Everest.1945

The concentration camp at Auschwitz is liberated by Soviet troops on 27th January, now Holocaust Memorial Day.

1947 India becomes an independent state under Prime Minister, Pandit Nehru.

1961 Amnesty International is founded in London.

1927First full-length talking movieis produced in Hollywood.

1925 George Bernard Shaw wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1927 Mies van der Rohe designs The German Pavilion at the International Exposition in Barcelona.

This display charts significant physics discoveries since the 16th century and places them in the context of major milestones from the worlds of exploration, art, history, politics, sport and science. While not an exhaustive list the timeline illustrates a diverse and extraordinary world in which physics plays a central role. Irish entries are in bold.

If you would like to learn more about Physics in Time past, present and future, visit www.iopireland.org

Physics In TIme

1543Copernicus proposes that the earth is not the centre of the Universe in De Revolutionibus.

1609Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

1399The Tower of Pisa is completed.

1512 michelangelo completes ceiling of Sistine Chapel. 1599

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is built in London.

1513machiavelli writes The Prince.

1610Galileo constructs a refracting telescope and observes moons of Jupiter.

1662Boyle’s law connects volume and pressure of a gas at constant temperature.

1687 newton’s laws of motion and gravitation published in Principia Mathematica.

1704newton publishes Opticks, light can be split into a spectrum of colours.

1803Young’s double slit experiment demonstrates wave form of light.

1821Faraday builds the world’s first electric motor.

1848Kelvin establishes absolute scale of temperature.

1845William Parsons builds the world’s largest reflecting telescope, in co. Offaly.

1850Clausius’ second law of thermodynamics.

1869The Tyndall Effect, why the sky is blue and the sunset red.

1861maxwell’s equations of electricity and magnetism.

1895Röntgen discovers X–rays.

1897Marconi sends the first ever wireless communication over open sea.

1898 Rutherford identifies alpha and beta particles.

1901Planck’s law describes black body radiation.

1505Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa.

1632Construction of the Taj mahal begins.

1634Cinderella is published in a collection of stories by The Brothers Grimm.

1665Vermeer paints Girl with a Pearl Earring.

1721 JS Bach completes his Brandenburg Concertos.

1742 handel’s Messiah is performed for the first time at Fishamble st in Dublin.

1786mozart composes The Marriage of Figaro.

1818 Frankenstein by mary Shelley is published in London.

1872monet’s Impression, Sunrise is the first Impressionist painting.

1889 eiffel Tower built.

1895First performance of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

1902Auguste Rodin sculpts The Thinker.

1922 James Joyce’s Ulysses is published.

1923The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to William Butler yeats.

1924Gershwin composes Rhapsody in Blue.

1469Lorenzo de medici takes power in Florence.

1492 Columbus arrives at, and names, the island of Hispaniola - now known as Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

1517 martin Luther posts his Ninety-Five Theses, leading to the Reformation.

1602Battle of Kinsale.

1620The mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock.

1762 empress Catherine the Great begins her reign over Russia.

1770 Captain Cook and the crew of the endeavour land in Botany Bay.

1776American Independence.

1800The Act of Union.1789

Storming of the Bastille, Paris.

1850The Tara Brooch is found in co. Meath.

1869The Suez canal opens, connecting the mediterranean with the Red Sea.

1909RMs Titanic is constructed in Belfast. it is launched and sinks in 1912.

1907The Suffragettes march through London.

1911 Roald Amundsen and his team arrive at the South Pole.

1920mahatma Ghandi begins campaign for Indian independence.

1922ireland becomes an independent state.

1922 In egypt the tomb of Tutankhamun is discovered.

1860Florence nightingale opens the first non-religious nursing school in the world.

1916 The Battle of the Somme.

1546 Fracastoro discovers that infection spreads via germ contact. 1590

Jannssen invents the microscope.

1667 Jean Baptiste Denys, physician to Louis XIV, performs the first human blood transfusion. 1778

Lavoisier discovers Hydrogen and Oxygen.

1796edward Jenner develops the process of vaccination.

1804Dalton publishes his Atomic Theory of the elements.

1852matches are introduced.

1856Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, is born.

1858Gray’s Anatomy is published.

1859Charles Darwin‘s On the Origin of Species is published.

1860Bunsen and Kirchhoff develop analytical spectroscopy.

1865 mendel founds the new science of genetics.

1869Dmitri mendeleev creates periodic table of elements.

1876Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish teacher, invents the telephone.

1895Röntgen discovers use of X-rays in medical imaging.

1897 Asprin is invented in Germany.

1735 Harrison invents the firstpractical marine chronometer, which enables sailors to calculate with accuracy their longitude at sea.

1832Babbage invents the difference engine, the first computer.

1903The Wright brothers build and fly the first successful aeroplane.

ciRcA 1400Golf first played at St. Andrews in Scotland.

ciRcA 1425Packs of Playing Cards are among the most popular products of europe’s first printing presses.

1532 Henry VIII builds a tennis court (then known as Royal Tennis) at Hampton Court Palace.

1796Roulette first played, in Paris.

1877First cricket Test match, between england and Australia.

1887The first All-ireland Football and hurling championships are played.

1891Basketball first played, in the USA.

1896First modern Olympic Games are held in Athens.

1890 The first known crossword puzzle appears in the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato.

1894ireland wins the Rugby Triple crown for the first time.

1908Hockey becomes an Olympic sport.

1905Dimple pattern applied to golf balls maximising lift and minimising drag.

1912“Photo Finish” used for the first time at the Summer Olympics in Stockholm.

1927The first World Snooker Championship played in Birmingham.

1930Uruguay hosts, and wins, the first soccer World Cup. 1941

Special monopoly edition created for World War II prisoners of war. Hidden inside were maps, compasses, etc. to aid escapes.

1948Scrabble first produced.

1905einstein’s Miraculous Year, photoelectric effect, brownian motion, special relativity e=mc2.

1913Bohr, quantum theory of atomic orbits.

1903marie Curie, Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel win the nobel Prize for their discovery of radioactivity.

1919eddington, using an irish-built telescope (Grubb) observes gravity bending starlight during a solar eclipse - the first supporting evidence for einstein’s General Relativity prediction.

1678 Hooke’s Law of elasticity.

1752 Franklin demonstrates the electrical nature of lightning.

1800 Volta constructs the first electric battery.

1843 hamilton writes the fundamental formula for quaternions on Broome Bridge in Dublin, i² = j² = k² = ijk = −1.

1836 callan invents induction coil, on which our supply of electricity depends.

1843 Joule studies nature of heat, leading to theory of conservation of energy.

1854 cork based mathematician George Boole develops boolean algebra which later becomes the basis of programming.

1887 michelson and morley’s experiments refute the ether theory.

1888 Hertz demonstrates radio waves, a part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

1889 Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction: a significant step on the way to einstein’s relativity theories.

1914 Joly develops radiotherapy in cancer treatment.

1915 einstein’s General Theory of Relativity published.

1260 marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, travels the silk road to Central Asia and China. He becomes a confidant of Kubla Khan.

1520 The Straits of magellan first navigated.

1592 Trinity college Dublin founded.

1789 Armagh Observatory founded.

1845 Queens University Belfast founded.

1860Construction begins on the London Underground.

1865 The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishes and prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.

1929 The Graf Zeppelin becomes the first airship to circumnavigate the world.

1933 Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

1440 Johannes Guttenberg invents the first printing press with moveable type.

1543 On the Structure of the Human Body published by Andreas Vesalius, the founder of modern human anatomy.

1628 Harvey describes the circulation of the blood.

1799 Humphry Davy discovers the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide.

1805 Beaufort wind force scale developed.

1835 Samuel morse develops morse Code.

1846 Robert Mallet introduces the science of seismology.

1846 First painless surgery with general anaesthetic.

1849 elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree. 1888

Dunlop patents pneumatic tyre.

1903 Willem einthoven discovers electrocardiography (eCG/eKG).

1917 harry Ferguson patents innovative developments in tractor operation. he also developed the first four-wheel drive Formula One car, the Ferguson P99.

1527 The Town statutes of Galway forbid the playing of handball against the walls of the town.

1829 Oxford and Cambridge universities compete in the first university boat race, held at Henley, UK.

1856 The rules of croquet registered.

1868 The Dublin horse show is first held in the grounds of Leinster house, organised by the Royal Dublin society.

1845 The rules for the modern game of baseball are drawn up by Alexander Cartwright.

1907 The current form of petanque (boules) originates in Provence.

1919 The first professional American Football championship played.

1921 Table football invented by Harold Searles Thornton.

1960 At the Olympic Games in Rome, 400 athletes from 23 countries attend to compete in the “Parallel Olympics”, the first Paralympics.

1954 Roger Bannister is the first athlete to run a mile in under 4 minutes.

1958 Northern ireland reaches the quarterfinals of the World cup.

1485 Botticelli paints The Birth of Venus.

1602 Caravaggio paints The Taking of Christ.

1605 Cervantes’ Don Quixote (Part I) published in Spain.

1667 John milton’s Paradise Lost is published.

1726 Jonathan swift writes Gulliver’s Travels. 1791

The custom house, designed by James Gandon, is completed.

1808 Beethoven completes Symphony no. 5.

1836 Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers, published. 1856

Flaubert’s Madame Bovary published.

1859 Big Ben completed.

1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is published.

1892 First performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.

1894 Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book published.

1897 Dracula by irish-born writer, Bram stoker, is published.

1897 Birth of enid Blyton. Her books have sold over 600 million copies.

1909 Birth of painter Francis Bacon.

1924 The painter Jack B. yeats wins a silver medal in the Arts and culture segment of the Olympic Games in Paris. he is the first irishman after the foundation of the state to win an Olympic medal.