ATAAA AA AAtomic Theory

In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a scientifictheory of the nature of matter,

which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms. ... The
word atom comes from the Ancient Greek adjective atomos, meaning "indivisible".

Greek Origins
The idea that all matter is made up of tiny, indivisible particles, or atoms, is believed to
have originated with the Greek philosopher Leucippus of Miletus and his
student Democritus of Abdera in the 5th century B.C. (The word atom comes from the
Greek word atomos, which means indivisible.) These thinkers held that, in addition to
being too small to be seen, unchangeable, and indestructible, atoms were also
completely solid, with no internal structure, and came in an infinite variety of shapes and
sizes, which accounted for the different kinds of matter. Color, taste, and other
intangible qualities were also thought to be composed of atoms.
While the idea of the atom was supported by some later Greek philosophers, it was
fiercely attacked by others, including Aristotle, who argued against the existence of such
particles. During the Middle Ages in Europe, Roman Catholic theologians were heavily
influenced by Aristotle's ideas, and so atomic philosophy was largely dismissed for
centuries. However, the Greeks' conception of the atom survived, both in Aristotle's
works (his arguments against) and in another classical work by the Roman
author Lucretius, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), which was rediscovered
in Europe at the start of the Renaissance.

Modern Development
Modern atomic theory is generally said to begin with John Dalton, an English chemist
and meteorologist who in 1808 published a book on the atmosphere and the behavior of
gases that was entitled A New System of Chemical Philosophy. Dalton's theory
of atoms rested on four basic ideas: chemical elements were composed of atoms; the
atoms of an element were identical in weight; the atoms of different elements had
different weights; and atoms combined only in small whole-number ratios, such as 1:1,
1:2, 2:1, 2:3, to form compounds.
Not all of these ideas were new; the Greeks had already introduced the idea that
elements were composed of atoms and that atoms of different elements had different
physical properties. Dalton's particular contribution, which distinguished his work from
what had been done before, was his method for actually determining atomic weight. In
an essay published in 1805, Dalton had included a list of atomic weights for 21
elements. Dalton was also the first to propose standard symbols for the elements .

Protons and Neutrons

Since Thomson's discovery of the electron in 1897, scientists had realized that an atom
must contain a positive charge to counterbalance the electrons' negative charge. In
1919, as a byproduct of his experiments on the splitting of atomic nuclei, Rutherford
discovered the proton, which constitutes the nucleus of a hydrogen atom. A proton
carries a single positive electrical charge, and every atomic nucleus contains one or
more protons. Although Rutherford proposed the existence of a neutral subatomic
particle, the neutron, in 1920, the actual discovery was made by English physicist
James Chadwick, a former student of Rutherford, in 1932.