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.

S

Schmidt telescope 1930
School of Science founded in Bagdad 800
Schrφdinger 1887- 1961
Sea floor spreading theory proposed 1960
Searle's apparatus for elasticity 1900
Secondary wavelets - Huygens 1678
Seebeck 1770-1831
Seebeck effect - thermocouple 1821
Self inductance - Joseph Henry (paper published)(discovered ?1829)1833
Semiconductor laser 1962
Servomechanisms 1953
Sigma particle 1952
Silicon identified - Jφns Jacob Berzelius 1824
Simple laws of friction - Amontons 1699
Singing flame - Higgins 1777
Slave trade abolished 1807
Slide rule – William Oughtred 1621
Snell 1591-1626
Snell's law 1621
Snell's law published - Descartes 1638
Soddy 1877-1956
Solar batteries 1954
Solar radio emission detected 1942
Solar System includes twelve planets - August 2006
Sommerfield 1868-1951
Somnium – Kepler's science fiction story of mans voyage to the Moon 1634
Sound – speed of sound - Arago 1822
Sound – speed of sound – Kundt's dust tube method 1866
Sound – speed of sound in solids - Biot 1808
Space flight – Sputnik V – 4500 kg – Strlka and Belka recovered alive 1960
Space flight – Titov – 17 orbits 1961
Space flight – chimpanzee in Mercury capsule 1961
Space flight – first manned orbital flight – Yuri Gagarin 1961
Space flight – Mercury 3 – Alan Sheppard 1961
Space flight – Mercury 4 – Gus Grissom 1961
Space flight – Mariner 2 flies close to Venus – surface temperature 700 K 1962
Space flight - Ariel – British satellite 1962
Space flight – Mercury 6 – John Glenn – three orbits 1962
Space flight – Mercury 7 1962
Space flight – Mercury 8 1962
Space flight – Vostok 3 – 64 orbits 1962
Space flight – Vostok 4 – 48 orbits 1962
Space flight – Vostok 5 – 81 orbits 1963
Space flight – Vostok 6 – 48 orbits – Tereschkova – first woman in space 1963
Space flight - Mercury 9 – 22 orbits – final Mercury flight 1963
Space flight – Gemini unmanned test flight 1964
Space flight – Ranger 7 – close up photos of the Moon 1964
Space flight – Voshkod I – 16 orbits of the Earth – three astronauts 1964
Space flight – Voshkod II – seventeen orbits – first space walk 1965
Space flight – Gemini 3 1965
Space flight – Gemini 4 1965
Space flight – Gemini 6 and 7 rendezvous in orbit (206 orbits Gemini 7)1965
Space flight – final Gemini flights – 8,9,10,11,12 1966
Space flight – Lunar Orbiter – view of Earth from the Moon 1966
Space flight – Luna 9 – first soft landing on the Moon 1966
Space flight – Surveyor I – soft landing on the Moon 1966
Space flight - Soyuz I 1967
Space flight - Saturn V – test firing to 11000 miles 1967
Space flight – USSR – link up of two unmanned satellites 1967
Space flight – Venus 4 probe soft landing on Venus 1967
Space flight – first space fatalities one USSR. Three USA 1967
Space flight - Apollo 7 orbits the Earth 1968
Space flight – Apollo 8 – men orbit the Moon 1968
Space flight – Luna 14 into lunar orbit 1968
Space flight – Soyuz 3 1968
Space flight – Zond 5 and 6 – round the Moon and back 1968
Space flight – Apollo 9 1969
Space flight – Apollo 10 1969
Space flight – Apollo 11 – men land on the Moon 1969
Space flight – Apollo 12 1969
Space flight – Mariner photographs Mars 1969
Space flight – rocket USSR 10 million pounds of thrust, explodes on ground 1969
Space flight – Soyuz 4 and 5 – first manned orbital link up 1969
Space flight – Soyuz 6,7 and 8 – first space welding 1969
Space flight - Apollo 13 1970
Space shuttle operational 1982
Spaceflight – Chinese launch manned orbital spacecraft 2003
Spectacles 1350
Spectroscope - Joseph von Fraunhofer 1814
Spectroscope used in a total eclipse of the Sun 1869
Spectrum experiments - Newton 1672
Speed of sound - Mersenne 1636
Spinning Jenny – Hargreaves 1764
Spiral galaxies - William Parsons 1855
Spontaneous disintegration - Soddy 1902
Sputnik I launched 1957
Sputnik II – dog Laika 1957
Star – first one appears 1 billion years
Stark effect 1913
Stark – Nobel prize for Physics 1919
Stars in the Milky Way - Galileo 1610
Stars scattered through space – Thomas Digges 1576
Steady state theory – Hoyle 1949
Steam boat – first successful one made 1802
Stefan 1835-1893
Stefan's Law for Black Body radiation 1879
Stefan-Boltzmann Law 1884
Stellar spectral classification – Henry Draper catalogue published 1924
Stephenson 1781- 1848
Stirling engine patented 1817
Stockton to Darlington railway 1825
Stokes 1819-1903
Stoney 1826-1911
'Strange' particles detected in cosmic ray experiments – named later 1946
Strangeness - Gell-Mann and Nishijima 1953
Sun's motion through space - William Herschel 1782
Sunspots – large magnetic field discovered - Hale 1908
Sunspots discovered – Galileo 1610
Superconductivity – Onnes 1911
Supercooling of water - Gabriel Fahrenheit 1724
Superfluid helium produced 1930
Superfluidity - Kammerlingh Onnes 1908
Superfluidity – Kapitza 1938
Supergravity - Ferrara, Freedman, Nieuwenhuizen 1976
Supernova in Cassiopeia observed by Tycho 1572
Supernova 1604
Superstring theory – Green and Schwarz 1982
Supersymmetry - Wess and Zumino 1973
Synchrocyclotron 1945
Synchrotron – electron synchrotron 1946
Synchrotron – 28 GeV machine at CERN 1960