History of Physics and Astronomy

This version sorts the important events by name. The lifetimes of people are highlighted in blue, important people are in bold blue.

M

Mach 1838- 1916
Magdeburg hemispheres (?1660) 1651
Magdeburg hemispheres – Otto von Guericke 1660
Magellan sails round the world 1519-1522
Magnetic resonance principle 1938
Magnetism – inverse square law 1784
Magnetron 1933
Magnets – William Gilbert 1600
Marconi 1874- 1945
Mars – a little water vapour detected 1943
Mars – small amount of carbon dioxide – Kuiper 1947
Mars – water vapour – Dolfus – Mount Wilson 100"1963
Mars 2 capsule – first Mars landing 1971
Mars comes closer to Earth than it will be for 60 000 years 2003
Maser 1954
Maser echo from Venus 1959
Maskelyne – astronomer royal 1732-1811
Mass of electrified particle increases as speed increases 1881
Mass spectrograph – Thomson 1912
Matrices – Cayley 1858
Maxwell 1831- 1879
Mayer – forerunner of Joule's experiment 1842
Mean free path of a molecule – Clausius 1858
Mechanical calculator – Blaise Pascal 1642
Mechanical equivalent of heat – Joule 1847
Meissner effect detected in superconductors 1933
Mendeleev 1834-1907
Mendeleev table of the elements 1869
Mercury thermometer 1643
Mercury thermometer – Fahrenheit (?1714)1720
Mesons predicted - Yukawa 1935
Mesons first produced in the laboratory 1948
Messier's catalogue of nebulae 1781
Meteors – observation by radar – Hey and Stewart 1945
Methane and ammonia discovered in the giant planets 1932
Metre – modern standard metre introduced 1889
Metre – number of cadmium waves in a metre - Michelson 1892
Metre – standard version made 1799
Michelson 1852-1931
Michelson – Nobel prize for Physics 1907
Michelson-Morley experiment – absence of ether drift 1887
Micrographia – microscope - Hooke 1665
Micrometer used to measure the diameter of Sun and planets - Gasgoine 1639
Microphone – carbon microphone – Hughes 1878
Microwave ovens first go on sale 1947
Milky Way structure described - Shapley 1919
Milky Way rotation detected - Oort 1927
Millikan 1868- 1953
Millikan's method for measuring the electron charge 1911
Minor planet – first to be discovered by photography - Wolf 1891
Mira – variable star – observed by David Fabricius 1596
MKS units Giorgi 1901
Molecular velocity distribution in a gas – Maxwell 1860
Moons of Mars discovered - Asaph Hall 1877
Mφssbauer effect 1959
Mossbauer effect discovered 1960
Motion picture – first one made 1893
Mount Wilson 100" opened - November 1917