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.
Pre-17th century
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.
c. 450 BC Empedocles asserts that all things are composed of four primal roots (later to be renamed stoicheia or elements): earth, air, fire, and water, whereby two active and opposing cosmic forces, love and strife, act upon these elements, combining and separating them into infinitely varied forms.Kingsley, K. Scarlett and Richard Parry, "Empedocles", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
c. 440 BC Leucippus and Democritus propose the idea of the atom, an indivisible particle that all matter is made of. This idea is largely rejected by natural philosophers in favor of the Aristotelian view (see below).
c. 360 BC Plato coins term ‘elements’ (stoicheia) and in his dialogue Timaeus, which includes a discussion of the composition of inorganic and organic bodies and is a rudimentary treatise on chemistry, assumes that the minute particle of each element had a special geometric shape: tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and cube (earth).
c. 350 BC Aristotle, expanding on Empedocles, proposes idea of a substance as a combination of matter and form. Describes theory of the Five Elements, fire, water, earth, air, and aether. This theory is largely accepted throughout the western world for over 1000 years.
c. 50 BC Lucretius publishes De Rerum Natura, a poetic description of the ideas of atomism.
c. 300 Zosimos of Panopolis writes some of the oldest known books on alchemy, which he defines as the study of the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies.
c. 800 The Secret of Creation (Arabic: Sirr al-khalīqa), an anonymous encyclopedic work on natural philosophy falsely attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, records the earliest known version of the long-held theory that all metals are composed of various proportions of sulfur and mercury.Kraus, Paul 1942-1943. Jâbir ibn Hayyân: Contribution à l'histoire des idées scientifiques dans l'Islam. I. Le corpus des écrits jâbiriens. II. Jâbir et la science grecque. Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, vol. II, p. 1, note 1; Weisser, Ursula 1980. Das Buch über das Geheimnis der Schöpfung von Pseudo-Apollonios von Tyana. Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 199. On the dating and historical background of the Sirr al-khalīqa, see Kraus 1942−1943, vol. II, pp. 270–303; Weisser 1980, pp. 39–72. On the further history of this theory up to the eighteenth century, see Norris, John 2006. “The Mineral Exhalation Theory of Metallogenesis in Pre-Modern Mineral Science” in: Ambix, 53, pp. 43–65. This same work also contains the earliest known version of the Emerald Tablet,Weisser 1980, p. 46. a compact and cryptic Hermetic text which was still commented upon by Isaac Newton.Isaac Newton. "Keynes MS. 28". The Chymistry of Isaac Newton. Ed. William R. Newman. June 2010.
c. 850–900 Arabic works attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Latin: Geber) introduce a systematic classification of chemical substances, and provide instructions for deriving an inorganic compound (sal ammoniac or ammonium chloride) from organic substances (such as plants, blood, and hair) by chemical means. pp. 338–340; vol. II, pp. 41–42.
c. 900 Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (Latin: Rhazes), a Persian alchemist, conducts experiments with the distillation of sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride), vitriols (hydrated sulfates of various metals), and other salts, pp. 141-142. representing the first step in a long process that would eventually lead to the thirteenth-century discovery of the mineral acids..
c. 1000 Abū al-Rayhān al-Bīrūnī and Avicenna,Robert Briffault (1938). The Making of Humanity, p. 196-197. both Persian philosophers, deny the possibility of the transmutation of metals.
c. 1100–1200 Recipes for the production of aqua ardens ("burning water", i.e., ethanol) by distilling wine with common salt start to appear in a number of Latin alchemical works..
c. 1220 Robert Grosseteste publishes several Aristotelian commentaries where he lays out an early framework for the scientific method.
c. 1250 The works of Taddeo Alderotti (1223–1296) describe a method for concentrating ethanol involving repeated fractional distillation through a water-cooled still, by which an ethanol purity of 90% could be obtained. pp. 51–52.
c. 1260 St Albertus Magnus discovers arsenic and silver nitrate. He also made one of the first references to sulfuric acid.Vladimir Karpenko, John A. Norris(2001), Vitriol in the history of Chemistry, Charles University
c. 1267 Roger Bacon publishes Opus Maius, which among other things, proposes an early form of the scientific method, and contains results of his experiments with gunpowder.
c. 1310 Pseudo-Geber, an anonymous alchemist who wrote under the name of Geber (i.e., Jābir ibn Hayyān, see above), publishes the . This work contains experimental demonstrations of the corpuscular nature of matter that would still be used by seventeenth-century chemists such as Daniel Sennert.Newman, William R. 1985. “New Light on the Identity of Geber” in: Sudhoffs Archiv, 69(1), pp. 76-90; Newman, William R. 2001. "Experimental Corpuscular Theory in Aristotelian Alchemy: From Geber to Sennert" in: Christoph Lüthy (ed.). Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories. Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 291-329; Newman, William R. 2006. Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pseudo-Geber is one of the first alchemists to describe mineral acids such as or 'strong water' (nitric acid, capable of dissolving silver) and or 'royal water' (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, capable of dissolving gold and platinum).
c. 1530 Paracelsus develops the study of iatrochemistry, a subdiscipline of alchemy dedicated to extending life, thus being the roots of the modern pharmaceutical industry. It is also claimed that he is the first to use the word "chemistry".
1597 Andreas Libavius publishes Alchemia, a prototype chemistry textbook.
17th and 18th centuries 1605 Sir Francis Bacon publishes The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, which contains a description of what would later be known as the scientific method.
1605 Michal Sedziwój publishes the alchemical treatise A New Light of Alchemy which proposed the existence of the "food of life" within air, much later recognized as oxygen.
1615 Jean Beguin publishes the Tyrocinium Chymicum, an early chemistry textbook, and in it draws the first-ever chemical equation.
1637 René Descartes publishes Discours de la méthode, which contains an outline of the scientific method.
1648 Posthumous publication of the book Ortus medicinae by Jan Baptist van Helmont, which is cited by some as a major transitional work between alchemy and chemistry, and as an important influence on Robert Boyle. The book contains the results of numerous experiments and establishes an early version of the law of conservation of mass.
1661 Robert Boyle publishes The Sceptical Chymist, a treatise on the distinction between chemistry and alchemy. It contains some of the earliest modern ideas of atoms, molecules, and chemical reaction, and marks the beginning of the history of modern chemistry.
1662 Robert Boyle proposes Boyle's law, an experimentally based description of the behavior of gases, specifically the relationship between pressure and volume.
1735 Swedish chemist Georg Brandt analyzes a dark blue pigment found in copper ore. Brandt demonstrated that the pigment contained a new element, later named cobalt.Georg Brandt first showed cobalt to be a new metal in: G. Brandt (1735) "Dissertatio de semimetallis" (Dissertation on semi-metals), Acta Literaria et Scientiarum Sveciae (Journal of Swedish literature and sciences), vol. 4, pages 1–10.See also: (1) G. Brandt (1746) "Rön och anmärkningar angäende en synnerlig färg — cobolt" (Observations and remarks concerning an extraordinary pigment — cobalt), Kongliga Svenska vetenskapsakademiens handlingar (Transactions of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science), vol.7, pages 119–130; (2) G. Brandt (1748) "Cobalti nova species examinata et descripta" (Cobalt, a new element examined and described), Acta Regiae Societatis Scientiarum Upsaliensis (Journal of the Royal Scientific Society of Uppsala), 1st series, vol. 3, pages 33–41; (3) James L. Marshall and Virginia R. Marshall (Spring 2003) "Rediscovery of the Elements: Riddarhyttan, Sweden," The Hexagon (official journal of the Alpha Chi Sigma fraternity of chemists), vol. 94, no. 1, pages 3–8.
1754 Joseph Black isolates carbon dioxide, which he called "fixed air".
1757 Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt, while investigating arsenic compounds, creates Cadet's fuming liquid, later discovered to be cacodyl oxide, considered to be the first synthetic organometallic compound.
1758 Joseph Black formulates the concept of latent heat to explain the thermochemistry of phase changes.
1766 Henry Cavendish discovers hydrogen as a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air.
1773–1774 Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestley independently isolate oxygen, called by Priestley "dephlogisticated air" and Scheele "fire air".
1778 Antoine Lavoisier, considered "The father of modern chemistry","Lavoisier, Antoine." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 24 July 2007 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9369846>. recognizes and names oxygen, and recognizes its importance and role in combustion.
1787 Antoine Lavoisier publishes Méthode de nomenclature chimique, the first modern system of chemical nomenclature.
1787 Jacques Charles proposes Charles's law, a corollary of Boyle's law, describes relationship between temperature and volume of a gas.
1789 Antoine Lavoisier publishes Traité Élémentaire de Chimie, the first modern chemistry textbook. It is a complete survey of (at that time) modern chemistry, including the first concise definition of the law of conservation of mass, and thus also represents the founding of the discipline of stoichiometry or quantitative chemical analysis.
1797 Joseph Proust proposes the law of definite proportions, which states that elements always combine in small, whole number ratios to form compounds.
1800 Alessandro Volta devises the first chemical battery, thereby founding the discipline of electrochemistry.
19th century
1803 John Dalton proposes Dalton's law, which describes relationship between the components in a mixture of gases and the relative pressure each contributes to that of the overall mixture.
1805 Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac discovers that water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen by volume.
1808