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The people behind the elements
The people behind the table
Ten lives, told as stories: the dreamer who saw the table in his sleep, the woman who carried two Nobel Prizes, the boy from Khulna who gave away everything he earned. For every biography there is a quiz-ready legacy.
1743–1794Antoine LavoisierFather of modern chemistry — the man who put chemistry on the balanceThe Parisian who proved that matter is never created or destroyed, named oxygen and hydrogen, and wrote the first modern chemistry textbook — before the French Revolution cut his life short.1766–1844John DaltonProphet of the atom — the quiet Quaker who said matter is made of particlesA poor Quaker schoolmaster from Cumberland who turned a boyhood obsession with the weather into the atomic theory — every element is built from identical, indestructible atoms. It is the foundation every chemistry class still stands on.1834–1907Dmitri MendeleevArchitect of the periodic tableThe Siberian who arranged the elements by atomic weight, saw their properties repeat in periods, left bold gaps for metals nobody had seen — and lived to watch gallium and germanium walk into his empty seats.1856–1940J. J. ThomsonDiscoverer of the electron — the man who broke open the unsplittable atomThe Cambridge professor who bent cathode rays, measured particles a thousand times lighter than hydrogen, and proved the atom has parts — opening the road to atomic structure, isotopes and modern electronics.1861–1944Prafulla Chandra RayFather of Indian chemistry — son of Khulna, servant of studentsThe chemist born in Raruli-Katipara village of Khulna — today’s Bangladesh — who discovered mercurous nitrite, built India’s first pharmaceutical company, and gave away nearly everything he earned to students and to his people.1867–1934Marie CuriePioneer of radioactivity; discoverer of polonium and radiumPolish-born physicist and chemist who named radioactivity, discovered polonium and radium, and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.1871–1937Ernest RutherfordFather of nuclear physicsNew Zealand farm boy who found the tiny nucleus at the heart of the atom with a sheet of gold foil, named the proton, and founded nuclear physics.1885–1962Niels BohrArchitect of the atomic shell modelDanish physicist who set electrons in fixed shells and explained the spectrum of hydrogen, giving the periodic table its physical skeleton.1887–1915Henry MoseleyThe man who gave the periodic table its true orderYoung English physicist whose X-ray law made atomic number, not atomic weight, the true order of the periodic table — before he fell at Gallipoli, aged 27.1891–1974James ChadwickDiscoverer of the neutronRutherford’s quiet student who discovered the neutron in 1932, explained isotopes, and unlocked the nuclear age.