Timeline of condensed matter physics

This article lists the main historical events in the history of condensed matter physics. This branch of physics focuses on understanding and studying the physical properties and transitions between phases of matter. Condensed matter refers to materials where particles (atoms, molecules, or ions) are closely packed together or under interaction, such as solids and liquids. This field explores a wide range of phenomena, including the electronic, magnetic, thermal, and mechanical properties of matter.

This timeline includes developments in subfields of condensed matter physics such as theoretical crystallography, solid-state physics, soft matter physics, mesoscopic physics, material physics, low-temperature physics, microscopic theories of magnetism in matter and optical properties of matter and metamaterials.

Even if material properties were modeled before 1900, condensed matter topics were considered as part of physics since the development of quantum mechanics and microscopic theories of matter. According to Philip W. Anderson, the term "condensed matter" appeared about 1965.

For history of fluid mechanics, see timeline of fluid and continuum mechanics.

Before quantum mechanics

Prehistory

Long ago, people began making useful things from materials around them. Between 28,000 and 12,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic time, the earliest ceramic objects were created for special purposes. From 10,000 to 3300 BC, in the Neolithic period, people developed pottery and learned about making glass and working with metals. The Bronze Age, from 3300 to 1200 BC, saw the creation of bronze by mixing copper and tin. In the Iron Age, from 1200 to 300 BC, iron and steel began to replace bronze.

Antiquity

In ancient times, people also discovered many interesting properties of materials. In the 8th century BC, writings in Ancient Greece first talked about the magnetic pull of lodestone. In the 6th century BC, Thales of Miletus noticed that rubbing fur on substances like amber made them stick together — this is now known as static electricity. Leucippus and Democritus came up with the idea that everything is made of tiny, indivisible parts called atoms. Aristotle described matter using four basic elements. Pliny the Elder wrote about a shepherd named Magnes who found that some iron stones could attract things. Claudius Ptolemy wrote about how light bends when it passes through different materials.

Classical theories before the 19th century

Many important discoveries were made before the 1800s. In 1611, Johannes Kepler talked about how spheres can fit together in space. Willebrord Snellius described how light bends between different materials. Robert Hooke discovered a basic rule about how stretchy materials behave. Isaac Newton explained motion and gravity, and also studied heat. Stephen Gray found that metals can carry electricity. Anton Brugmans discovered that some materials push away magnetic fields. René Just Haüy found that crystals break along specific planes, suggesting they are made of tiny, repeating building blocks.

19th century

The 1800s brought many new discoveries about materials and electricity. Alessandro Volta created the first battery. John Dalton revisited the idea that everything is made of atoms. Thomas Seebeck found that temperature differences can create electricity. Joseph Fourier explained how heat moves through materials. Georg Ohm discovered the relationship between electricity and voltage in metals. Michael Faraday studied how magnetic fields affect light. James Prescott Joule measured how electricity creates heat. Louis Pasteur showed that some crystals come in mirror-image forms. Auguste Bravais described the different ways crystals can repeat their patterns in space. Many other scientists made important findings about crystals, heat, light, and electricity during this time.

20th century

The 20th century brought many important discoveries in the field of condensed matter physics. This branch of science studies the properties of materials where atoms are closely packed together, like solids and liquids.

In the early 1900s, scientists began using quantum theory to explain things like how light is emitted by hot objects and how metals conduct electricity. Important figures like Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Niels Bohr made key contributions. One major discovery was superconductivity, where certain materials lose all electrical resistance at very low temperatures, found by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911.

The second half of the century saw even more breakthroughs. Theories were developed to explain phenomena like magnetism, sound in solids, and how electrons behave in different materials. Important milestones include the invention of the transistor in 1947, which revolutionized electronics, and the discovery of high-temperature superconductors in the 1980s, which could change power transmission and medical imaging. The experimental creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995 showed how particles can behave as a single quantum entity at very low temperatures.

21st century

In the early 2000s, scientists made many exciting discoveries about materials and how they behave. In 2000, they measured something called the thermal conductance quantum. Also in 2000, a scientist named Alexei Kitaev introduced a new theory about special chains of particles. In 2003, Deborah S. Jin created the first fermionic condensate, a new state of matter. In 2004, researchers made and identified single-layer graphene, a very thin and strong material.

More discoveries followed: in 2005, scientists proposed the quantum spin Hall effect. Between 2008 and 2010, researchers developed a periodic table for topological matter. In 2013, the quantum anomalous Hall effect was observed for the first time. In 2015, Weyl semimetals were demonstrated to exist. In 2018, twisted graphene was shown to conduct electricity without loss, a phenomenon called superconductivity. Most recently, in 2024, altermagnetism was discovered in experiments.