History of Physics

Physics as a discernible discipline began during the Renaissance, with Copernicus' model of planetary motion and Galileo's mechanics. Astronomy and mechanics continued to dominate the field, with the work of Newton, Kepler, and others; Newton and Leibniz developed calculus, which Newton used to express his theorems of mechanics. Galileo, Newton, and Kepler all studied optics.

Huygens was the first to envisage light as a wave, an idea strongly disputed by Newton. Galileo built one of the earliest telescopes, and the compound microscope was (probably) invented c.1590 by Zacharias Janssen. Thermodynamics dates from the work of Carnot, Joule, and others in the 19th-c. About this time, steam power was becoming important: Watt introduced his improved steam engine in 1769, and Stephenson's 'Rocket', a steam-powered railway engine, dates from 1829.

Franklin was the first to clarify the idea of electric charge; the electric battery was invented by Volta. The foundation of modern electromagnetism was laid by Ampère and Faraday, and electric motors and dynamos were invented at this time.
Newton's mechanics dominated physics for two centuries, and was in part responsible for a mechanistic philosophy that attempted to explain all phenomena in terms of mechanics.

The physicists' view of the world has changed dramatically due to two major developments in the early part of the 20th-c. The first was Einstein's theory of special relativity, which grew in part from Maxwell's work in electromagnetism in the second half of the 19th-c. From the special theory, Einstein went on to his general theory of relativity, a theory of gravity, which was possible only because of mathematical developments by Riemann in the study of geometry.

The second was the development of quantum theory and atomic theory by Schrödinger, Bohr, and many others. This was made possible by work in thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and the new radiations. It has led to modern solid state physics, as well as atomic, nuclear and particle physics. From these have developed electronics and hence computers, lasers, nuclear power, and much more.

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Since antiquity, people have tried to understand the behavior of matter: why unsupported objects drop to the ground, why different materials have different properties, and so forth. Also a mystery was the character of the universe, such as the form of the Earth and the behavior of celestial objects such as the Sun and the Moon. Several theories were proposed, most of them were wrong, but this is part of the nature of the scientific enterprise, and even modern theories of quantum mechanics and relativity are considered merely as "theories that haven't broken yet". Physical theories in antiquity were largely couched in philosophical terms, and rarely verified by systematic experimental testing.