Timeline of Scientific Experiments - 19th Century

19th Century

• 1801 – Thomas Young: double-slit experiment showing wave-particle duality
• 1820 – Hans Christian Ørsted discovers the connection of electricity and magnetism
• 1843 – James Prescott Joule measures the equivalence between mechanical work and heat, resulting in the law of conservation of energy
• 1845 – Christian Doppler demonstrates the Doppler shift
• 1851 – Léon Foucault uses Foucault pendulum is to demonstrate the rotation of the earth
• 1859 – Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species showing that evolution occurs by natural selection
• 1861 – Louis Pasteur disproves the theory of spontaneous generation
• 1863 – Gregor Mendel's pea plant experiments (Mendel's laws of inheritance)
• 1887 – Heinrich Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect
• 1887 – Michelson and Morley: Michelson-Morley experiment, showing that the speed of light is invariant
• 1896 – Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity
• 1897 – J. J. Thomson discovers the electron