History
The term "orbital" was coined by Robert Mulliken in 1932. However, the idea that electrons might revolve around a compact nucleus with definite angular momentum was convincingly argued at least 19 years earlier by Niels Bohr, and the Japanese physicist Hantaro Nagaoka published an orbit-based hypothesis for electronic behavior as early as 1904. Explaining the behavior of these electron "orbits" was one of the driving forces behind the development of quantum mechanics.
Read more about this topic: Atomic Orbital
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)