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
7000-3300 BC – New Stone Age: humans develop pottery and tools from stone and flint. 3300-1200 BC – Bronze Age: mixing copper and tin, provided the development of development of bronze tools. 1200-300 BC- Iron Age: bronze tools are replaced with iron and steel.
Antiquity
8th century BC: first writings on the magnetic properties of lodestone in Ancient Greece. 6th century BC – Thales of Miletus observes that rubbing fur on various substances, such as amber, would cause an attraction between the two, which is now known to be caused by static electricity. 5th century BC – Leucippus and Democritus postulate the philosophy of atomism. 4th century BC - Aristotle describes the composition of matter in terms of the four classical elements, founding Aristotelian physics. 1st century AD – Pliny the Elder in his Natural History records the story of Magnes the shepherd who discovered the magnetic properties of some iron stones. 160 AD – Claudius Ptolemy writes his book Optics on reflection and refraction of light, and tabulated angles of refraction for several media. He found a refraction law valid for small angles.
Classical theories before the 19th century
1611 – Johannes Kepler first states the Kepler conjecture about sphere packing in three-dimensional Euclidean space. It states that no arrangement of equally sized spheres filling space has a greater average density than that of the cubic close packing (face-centered cubic) and hexagonal close packing arrangements. 1621 – Willebrord Snellius reformulates the laws of refraction and reflection of light into Snell's law. 1660 – Robert Hooke postulates the simplest equation of linear elasticity known as Hooke's law. 1687 – Isaac Newton postulates the Newton's laws of motion. 1778 – Diamagnetism was first discovered when Anton Brugmans observed in 1778 that bismuth was repelled by magnetic fields. 1781– Abbé René Just Haüy (often termed the "Father of Modern Crystallography") discovers that crystals always cleave along crystallographic planes. Based on this observation, and the fact that the inter-facial angles in each crystal species always have the same value, Haüy concluded that crystals must be periodic and composed of regularly arranged rows of tiny polyhedra (molécules intégrantes). This theory explained why all crystal planes are related by small rational numbers (the law of rational indices).