Stone to Silicon

Timeline · 120 technologies

Math & science

c. 22,000 years ago to September 2026. Each one is placed by when it first worked.

Open the living tree

  1. c. 22,000 years agoTally marksNotches cut into bone keep a running count, the first external memory for numbers.
  2. c. 3,000 BCENumerals and arithmeticSumerian scribes turn tallies into written numerals and rules for adding, multiplying and dividing.
  3. c. 2,800 BCE365-day civil calendarEgypt fixes a 365-day year of twelve 30-day months plus five extra days.
  4. c. 1,800 BCEBabylonian mathematicsBase-60 place-value numerals let scribes solve quadratics and list Pythagorean triples.
  5. c. 700 BCEBabylonian astronomyCenturies of recorded sky observations let Babylonians predict eclipses arithmetically.
  6. c. 585 BCEGreek natural philosophyThales and the Ionians seek natural causes for the world instead of divine ones.
  7. c. 530 BCEPythagorean mathematicsThe Pythagoreans prove that the square on the hypotenuse equals the other two squares.
  8. c. 420 BCEAtomismDemocritus proposes that everything is made of indivisible particles moving in a void.
  9. c. 350 BCEAristotelian logicAristotle writes down the first formal system of valid reasoning, the syllogism.
  10. c. 300 BCEEuclid's ElementsEuclid derives 465 propositions from five postulates, the model of proof for 2,000 years.
  11. c. 250 BCEArchimedes' statics and buoyancyArchimedes states the law of the lever and the principle of buoyancy with mathematical proof.
  12. c. 240 BCEEarth's circumference measuredShadow angles in two Egyptian cities give the size of the round Earth.
  13. c. 140 BCETrigonometryHipparchus builds the first table of chords, turning angles into computable lengths.
  14. 45 BCEJulian calendarRome adopts a 365.25-day year with a leap day every four years.
  15. c. 150 CEPtolemy's AlmagestA geocentric model with epicycles predicts planetary positions for 1,400 years.
  16. c. 458 CEDecimal place valueIndian mathematicians write any number with nine digits and position, the system the world now uses.
  17. 628 CEZero as a numberBrahmagupta gives rules for arithmetic with zero and negative numbers.
  18. c. 820 CEAlgebraAl-Khwarizmi's book of completion and balancing gives general methods to solve equations.
  19. 1021Book of OpticsIbn al-Haytham shows by experiment that vision is light entering the eye.
  20. 1202Liber AbaciFibonacci brings Hindu-Arabic numerals to European merchants.
  21. 1543HeliocentrismCopernicus puts the Sun at the centre and makes the Earth a planet.
  22. 1576Tycho's precision astronomyTycho Brahe measures planetary positions to about one arcminute without a telescope.
  23. 1585Decimal fractionsStevin shows that decimals make fractions as easy as whole numbers.
  24. 1600De MagneteGilbert shows by experiment that the Earth itself is a great magnet.
  25. 1608TelescopeDutch spectacle makers put two lenses in a tube and see distant things up close.
  26. 1609Kepler's lawsKepler finds that planets move in ellipses, with speeds set by exact laws.
  27. 1610Sidereus NunciusGalileo sees Jupiter's moons, lunar mountains and countless stars.
  28. 1614LogarithmsNapier turns multiplication into addition, cutting astronomers' work dramatically.
  29. 1620Scientific methodBacon and Galileo argue that knowledge must be built from observation and experiment.
  30. 1637Analytic geometryDescartes and Fermat describe curves with equations on coordinate axes.
  31. 1638Galileo's laws of motionGalileo shows that falling bodies accelerate uniformly and projectiles trace parabolas.
  32. 1643Barometer and vacuumTorricelli's mercury tube proves air has weight and a vacuum can exist.
  33. 1654Probability theoryPascal and Fermat work out how to split the stakes of an unfinished game.
  34. 1660Royal SocietyLondon founds a society to test claims by experiment, motto 'take nobody's word for it'.
  35. 1662Boyle's lawBoyle shows that a gas's pressure and volume vary inversely.
  36. 1676Finite speed of lightTiming Io's eclipses, Romer shows that light takes time to travel.
  37. c. 1680CalculusNewton and Leibniz independently invent the mathematics of change and accumulation.
  38. 1687Newtonian mechanicsThree laws of motion and universal gravitation explain falling apples and orbiting planets alike.
  39. 1693Halley's life tableHalley builds a mortality table from Breslau records and prices life annuities.
  40. 1763Bayes' theoremA rule for updating belief in light of new evidence.
  41. 1788Deep timeHutton reads the rocks and finds 'no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end'.
  42. 1789Conservation of massLavoisier weighs reactions carefully and shows that mass is conserved.
  43. 1795Metric systemRevolutionary France defines decimal units from nature, the metre and the kilogram.
  44. 1803Wave theory of lightYoung's double-slit experiment shows light interferes like a wave.
  45. 1805Least squaresLegendre and Gauss fit the best line through noisy measurements.
  46. 1808Atomic theoryDalton proposes that each element has its own atoms of fixed weight.
  47. 1820Current deflects a compassOersted notices an electric current swinging a compass needle.
  48. 1822Fourier analysisFourier shows that any signal can be built from sine waves.
  49. 1824Carnot's heat engine theoryCarnot shows that an engine's efficiency is limited by its hot and cold temperatures.
  50. 1829Non-Euclidean geometryLobachevsky and Bolyai build consistent geometries where parallel lines diverge.
  51. 1831Electromagnetic inductionFaraday shows that a changing magnetic field makes an electric current.
  52. 1847Conservation of energyJoule and Helmholtz show that heat, work and electricity are forms of one conserved quantity.
  53. 1850Laws of thermodynamicsClausius and Kelvin state the first and second laws, and entropy enters physics.
  54. 1854Boolean logicBoole turns logic into algebra of true and false.
  55. 1859SpectroscopyKirchhoff and Bunsen read each element's fingerprint in its spectral lines.
  56. 1865Maxwell's equationsMaxwell unifies electricity, magnetism and light in four equations.
  57. 1869Periodic tableMendeleev arranges the elements by weight and predicts ones not yet found.
  58. 1874Set theoryCantor proves there are different sizes of infinity.
  59. 1877Statistical mechanicsBoltzmann explains entropy as counting the ways atoms can be arranged.
  60. 1879Predicate logicFrege creates a full formal language for mathematical reasoning.
  61. 1887Michelson-Morley experimentAn interferometer finds no trace of Earth moving through a light-carrying ether.
  62. 1887Radio waves detectedHertz makes and detects electromagnetic waves in his lab, confirming Maxwell.
  63. 1896Greenhouse effect quantifiedArrhenius calculates that doubling CO2 would warm the Earth by several degrees.
  64. 1896RadioactivityBecquerel finds uranium darkening photographic plates by itself.
  65. 1897ElectronJ. J. Thomson shows cathode rays are particles far lighter than any atom.
  66. 1900Planck's quantumPlanck assumes energy comes in discrete packets to explain glowing hot objects.
  67. 1905Light quantaEinstein explains the photoelectric effect with particles of light.
  68. 1905Special relativityEinstein shows space and time depend on motion and that E = mc^2.
  69. 1911Atomic nucleusRutherford finds almost all of an atom's mass in a tiny central nucleus.
  70. 1911SuperconductivityMercury cooled to 4.2 kelvin loses all electrical resistance.
  71. 1912Continental driftWegener proposes that the continents were once joined and have moved apart.
  72. 1913Bohr atomBohr puts electrons in quantised orbits and explains hydrogen's spectral lines.
  73. 1915General relativityEinstein describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime.
  74. 1917Stimulated emissionEinstein predicts that light can trigger an atom to emit an identical photon.
  75. 1925Modern statisticsFisher's handbook gives researchers significance tests, likelihood and analysis of variance.
  76. 1925Quantum mechanicsHeisenberg and Schrodinger write the laws that govern atoms and light.
  77. 1928Dirac equation and antimatterDirac merges quantum mechanics and relativity and predicts antimatter.
  78. 1929Expanding universeHubble finds that distant galaxies recede faster, the universe is expanding.
  79. 1931Godel's incompletenessGodel proves any consistent system rich enough for arithmetic has true but unprovable statements.
  80. 1932NeutronChadwick identifies the neutral particle in the nucleus.
  81. 1932Particle acceleratorLawrence's cyclotron spirals particles to high energies to probe nuclei.
  82. 1932Radio astronomyJansky hears radio static coming from the centre of the Milky Way.
  83. 1944Game theoryVon Neumann and Morgenstern model strategic choices mathematically.
  84. 1946Monte Carlo methodUlam and von Neumann solve hard problems by random sampling on a computer.
  85. 1948Big Bang nucleosynthesisAlpher and Gamow calculate how a hot early universe forged hydrogen and helium.
  86. 1948Quantum electrodynamicsFeynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga tame the quantum theory of light and electrons.
  87. 1949Radiocarbon datingLibby dates organic remains by the decay of carbon-14.
  88. 1955Atomic clockA caesium clock keeps time by an atomic transition instead of a swinging mass.
  89. 1956Age of the EarthPatterson dates meteorites and finds the Earth is 4.55 billion years old.
  90. 1958Keeling curveContinuous measurements on Mauna Loa show atmospheric CO2 rising every year.
  91. 1960International System of UnitsThe SI unifies measurement worldwide around seven base units.
  92. 1960LaserMaiman's ruby crystal emits the first coherent beam of light.
  93. 1963Chaos theoryLorenz finds that tiny rounding errors blow up in a simple weather model.
  94. 1964QuarksGell-Mann and Zweig propose that protons and neutrons are made of smaller quarks.
  95. 1965Cosmic microwave backgroundPenzias and Wilson find a faint microwave glow from every direction, the Big Bang's afterglow.
  96. 1967Plate tectonicsSeafloor magnetic stripes reveal that Earth's surface is a set of moving plates.
  97. 1968Electroweak unificationGlashow, Weinberg and Salam unify electromagnetism with the weak nuclear force.
  98. 1970Evidence for dark matterRubin and Ford find galaxies spin too fast for the matter we can see.
  99. 1971NP-completenessCook shows that many hard problems are equally hard, framing P versus NP.
  100. c. 1974Standard ModelQuantum field theory describes all known particles and three of the four forces.
  101. 1982Bell tests of entanglementAspect's experiments show quantum entanglement defies local explanation.
  102. 1990Hubble Space TelescopeA 2.4 m telescope above the atmosphere gives the sharpest views of the universe.
  103. 1995Exoplanets around Sun-like starsMayor and Queloz find 51 Pegasi b, a giant planet circling a Sun-like star.
  104. 1998Accelerating universeDistant supernovae reveal the universe's expansion is speeding up.
  105. 2008Large Hadron ColliderA 27 km ring of superconducting magnets collides protons at record energies.
  106. 2012Higgs bosonThe LHC finds the last missing particle of the Standard Model.
  107. 2015Gravitational waves detectedLIGO hears two black holes merge 1.3 billion light-years away.
  108. 2019First black hole imageAn Earth-sized radio telescope array photographs the shadow of M87's black hole.
  109. 2019SI redefined by constantsThe kilogram is no longer a metal cylinder but a fixed value of Planck's constant.
  110. 2021James Webb Space TelescopeA 6.5 m infrared telescope sees the first galaxies and probes exoplanet atmospheres.
  111. June 2025Rubin Observatory first imagesThe largest astronomy camera ever built opens a ten-year movie of the sky.
  112. September 2025Black hole area theorem confirmedThe clearest gravitational wave yet confirms a Hawking prediction.
  113. January 2026AI starts solving Erdős problemsOpen problems from Paul Erdős's list begin falling to AI.
  114. January 2026Migdal effect observedAn 87-year-old prediction confirmed, opening a way to find light dark matter.
  115. May 2026Erdős unit distance conjecture refutedAn AI model overturns an 80-year-old Erdős conjecture.
  116. July 2026Cycle double cover proofA 1970s graph theory conjecture reportedly proved in under an hour.
  117. July 2026Jacobian conjecture disprovedAn AI-found polynomial map ends an 87-year-old conjecture.
  118. August 2026Two thirds of zeta zeros on the lineAI lifts the proven share of Riemann zeta zeros on the critical line to 67%.
  119. August 2026Roman Space Telescope launchesA Hubble-sized mirror with a field of view 100 times wider.
  120. September 2026Fermat's Last Theorem machine-checkedAI agents write a complete Lean proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in 11 days.

Projections 4

  1. around 2033AI proves a major open conjectureAn AI system produces a verified proof of a famous unsolved mathematical problem.
  2. around 2037Space gravitational-wave observatoryThree spacecraft millions of kilometres apart listen for merging supermassive black holes.
  3. around 2042Biosignature on an exoplanetTelescopes find robust signs of life in the atmosphere of another world.
  4. around 2045Dark matter identifiedExperiments pin down what the invisible 85% of matter is made of.