History of Electrodynamics

Xuanye Ma project for the PHYS 631

Time Event
About 600 BC Thales, who lived in Greece, studied attractive forces associated with magnets, and a resin called "amber."(see ref1)
1600 William Gilbert(1544-1603, British), wrote "De magnete". In this book, he explained why compass needle points north-south: the Earth itself is magnetic.
1745 Dutch physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek of the University of Leyden and Ewald Georg von Kleist of Pomerania invented the Leyden Jar.(see ref2)
1747

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90, American) realized there are two kind of charge: positive charge and negative charge and the law of charge conservation.

1785 Charles A. de Coulomb (French),Coulomb's Law .
1799 Alessandro Volta (Italian) Voltaic Cell invented the Voltaic Cell.
1820 Hans Christian Oersted(1777-1851) noticed an electric current produced a magnetic field.
1820 Andre Marie Ampere, Jean-Baptute Biot,and Felix Savart.
1826 Georg Simon Ohm (German) Established the Ohm's Law.
1831 Michael Faraday (British), pointed out electromagnetic induction in the production of electric current, by a change in magnetic intensity.
1865 James Maxwell (1831-1879, British), Maxwell Equation.
1910 Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German), theory of Relativity.

Reference

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales

2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar