Timeline of Scientific Experiments - 20th Century

20th Century

• 1909 – Robert Millikan: oil-drop experiment which suggests that electric charge occurs as quanta (the electron)
• 1911 – Ernest Rutherford's gold foil experiment determines the shape of the atom
• 1911 – Onnes: superconductivity
• 1919 – Arthur Eddington: Our sun as gravitational lens, a proof of the Theory of relativity
• 1920 – Otto Stern and Walter Gerlach conduct the Stern-Gerlach experiment, which demonstrates particle spin
• 1920 – John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner conduct the Little Albert experiment
• 1928 – Griffith's experiment shows that living cells can be transformed via a transforming principle, later discovered to be DNA
• 1934 – Enrico Fermi splits the atom
• 1935 – Lady tasting tea experiment by Ronald A. Fisher, foundational in statistical hypothesis testing
• 1940 – Karl von Frisch decodes the "dance" honeybees use to communicate the location of flowers
• 1944 – Barbara McClintock breeds maize plants for color, which leads to the discovery of jumping genes
• 1947 – John Bardeen and Walter Brattain fabricate the first working transistor
• 1951 – Solomon Asch shows how group pressure can persuade an individual to conform to an obviously wrong opinion
• 1952 – Alfred Hershey & Martha Chase: Hershey-Chase experiment proves that DNA is the hereditary material
• 1953 – Stanley L. Miller & Harold C. Urey: Miller-Urey experiment demonstrates that organic compounds can arise spontaneously from inorganic ones
• 1955 – Clyde L. Cowan and Frederick Reines confirm the existence of the neutrino in the neutrino experiment
• 1958 – Meselson-Stahl experiment proves that DNA replication is semiconservative
• 1960 – B.F. Skinner's demonstrations of operant conditioning
• 1961 – Crick, Brenner et al. experiment
• 1961 – Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment
• 1964 – Nirenberg and Leder experiment
• 1965 – Arno Penzias, Robert Wilson: Cosmic microwave background radiation, evidence of the Big Bang
• 1967 – Kerim Kerimov launches the Cosmos 186 and Cosmos 188 as experiments on automatic docking eventually leading to the development of space stations
• 1970 – Allan and Beatrix Gardner teach American Sign Language to the chimpanzee Washoe
• 1971 – Muhammad Yunus carries out experiments on the applications of microcredit and microfinance in rural Bangladesh
• 1974 – Stanley Milgram: Milgram experiment on obedience to authority
• 1995 – Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman synthesize Bose-Einstein condensate