A History Of Classical Physics: From Antiquity To The Quantum

A History of Classical Physics; From Antiquity to the Quantum - 20th Century theories of the atom and the relativity of time and space radically altered the landscape of physics. Yet these theories were not formulated in a vacuum, they extended the work of those who had previously made invaluable discoveries. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus was the first to conceive of the atom, and Olaus Rømer, in the seventeenth century, was the first to propound the notion that light has a finite speed.