Timeline of developments in theoretical physics

This page lists important developments in theoretical physics that have either been experimentally confirmed or significantly influence current thinking in modern physics.

Discovery	Date	Literature
Kepler's laws of planetary motion	1609, 1619
The Galilean principle	1632
Newton's laws of motion	1687
Newton's law of universal gravitation	1687
Laws of thermodynamics	1824, 1873, 1930s
Coulomb's law	1785
Biot–Savart law	1820
Ampere's Law	1826
Faraday's law of induction	1831
Boltzmann equation	1872
Maxwell's equations and electromagnetic waves	1873
Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction	1889, 1892
Planck proposes quanta solution to radiation ultraviolet catastrophe	1900
Einstein proposes the photon	1905
Special relativity	1905
General relativity	1916
Schwarzschild metric	1916
Kaluza-Klein models
FRW Metric	1922, 1935, 1937
Chandrasekhar limit	1935
J. J. Thompson model
Rutherford model	1912
Bohr model	1913
Bose–Einstein statistics	1924
De Broglie wave	1924
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle	1927
Heisenberg Matrix Mechanics	1925
Fermi-Dirac Statistics	1926
Schrödinger equation	1926
Born Interpretation	1927
Dirac equation	1927
Dirac antiparticle	1930
S-Matrix
Feynman Path Integral	1941
Feynman rules and diagrams	1948
Quantum electrodynamics	1948
Yang–Mills theory
Spontaneous symmetry breaking
Electroweak unification
Renormalizability of gauge theories
Renormalization group
Veneziano model
QCD, quarks and gluons
Supersymmetry
Supergravity
Black Hole Entropy	1972
Hawking radiation	1974
Cosmic inflation
BRST symmetry
Skyrmions
Quantum computers
Bosonic strings
NSR strings
Green–Schwarz superstrings
Heterotic strings
T-duality
Loop quantum gravity
SUSY dark matter
Dark energy as cosmological constant
Matrix models/M-theory	1994, 1996, 1997
Randall-Sundrum models
Mirror symmetry
AdS/CFT and the holographic principle

See also

• Timeline of fundamental physics discoveries
• Timeline of theoretical physics