Corbin Allardice and Edward R. Trapnell (1949): An eyewitness account of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton: 1932 paper on the disintegration of lithium by fast protons: artificial transmutation. This paper is at Nature's physics portal. (Link to a biographical sketch of Cockcroft and one of Walton.)
Marie Curie: 1898 paper surveying the material world for radioactivity, finding it in uranium and thorium minerals, and suggesting that a new radioactive element may be found in pitchblende. (Link to a biographical information on Curie.)
Kasimir Fajans: 1913 paper on the radioactive displacement law and isotopes. This paper is at the ChemTeam site as is this photo.
Enrico Fermi: 1934 note suspects (incorrectly) production of transuranic elements by bombarding thorium and uranium with neutrons. Noddack critiqued this conclusion on chemical grounds. Meitner and Frisch later explained these results as nuclear fission. Fermi's paper is at the ChemTeam site. View biographical information on Fermi.
Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden: 1909 paper reporting unexpected backscatter of alpha particles; interpretation of this phenomenon led to the nuclear model of the atom. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch of Geiger
Hans Geiger: from 1910 paper on scattering of alpha particles from gold foil. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden: 1913 paper comparing backscatter of alpha particles to the predictions of Rutherford's nuclear model of the atom. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann: 1939 paper reporting a result they barely believe themselves: barium, lanthanum, and cerium obtained from the bombardment of uranium by neutrons, then a more definite announcement of uranium fission. These papers are at the ChemTeam site. View biographical information on Hahn and Strassmann
Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch: 1939 paper invokes fission of uranium to explain neutron bombardment results. This paper is at the Nature's physics portal. Link to a biographical sketch of Meitner.
William Ramsay & Frederick Soddy: 1903 investigation of the inert nature of radium emanation and the observation that helium is evolved from both radium and its emanation.
Theodore W. Richards & Max E. Lembert: 1914 paper on atomic weights of lead found different atomic weights for lead of radioactive origin compared to "ordinary" lead; authors cautiously interpret the results as consistent with the concept of isotopes. Link to a biographical sketch of Richards.
Ernest Rutherford: 1899 paper distinguishes between two types of radioactivity, which he labels alpha and beta. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch Rutherford.)
Ernest Rutherford: 1900 paper introduces concept of radioactive half-life and measures half-life of "thorium emanation" (now known as 220Rn). This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Ernest Rutherford & Frederick Soddy: 1902 paper that concludes, "radioactive elements must be undergoing spontaneous transformation." (This conclusion is found in the paper's final section.)
Ernest Rutherford and T. Royds: 1909 paper identifying the α particle with doubly-charged helium. The paper is worth reading for the careful marshalling of one last conclusive piece of evidence about the nature of the particles Rutherford and his co-workers had been studying for a decade.
Ernest Rutherford: abstract of a 1911 paper proposing the nuclear model of the atom to explain results of scattering experiments. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Ernest Rutherford: 1911 paper proposing the nuclear model of the atom to explain results of scattering experiments. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Ernest Rutherford: 1914 paper on the nuclear model of the atom, including reference to Moseley's work on atomic number. This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is Moseley's.
Ernest Rutherford: 1919 paper describing the bombardment of nitrogen by alpha particles. Rutherford concludes the nitrogen atoms are disintegrated in the process. So atoms are not indestructable after all, and the alchemists' dreams of transmutation are realized.
Ernest Rutherford: 1920 lecture describing the state of knowledge of nuclear structure at a time after the discovery of isotopy and atomic number but before the neutron; the standard picture included electrons in the nucleus.
M. L. Oliphant, P. Harteck, and Ernest Rutherford: 1934 note from the Rutherford lab describes fusion ('transmutation') of deuterium. These papers (preliminary note and more detailed paper) are at the ChemTeam site.
Frederick Soddy: 1913 paper which gives the rules for chemical transformations accompanying α and β decay; its discussion of "non-separable" elements all but defines (but does not name) isotopy, including a speculation that they are not limited to radioactive elements. (Link to a biographical sketch of Soddy.)
Frederick Soddy: 1913 paper which introduces the term "isotopes" for atoms which have the same nuclear charge but different mass.
Frederick Soddy: from 1913 review article; discusses isotopes and the displacement law
Silvanus Thompson: Thompson thought of performing the same sorts of experiments as Becquerel at about the same time; comparison of this paper with Becquerel's highlights the luck and genius of Becquerel. This article also illustrates the confusion immediately following the discovery of X-rays and radioactivity: the former were not believed to be electromagnetic and the latter was!
Emil Fischer: 1891 paper on the structure of glucose and other simple sugars, a landmark of stereochemical reasoning from wet chemistry. This paper [pdf] is at J. Michael McBride's site at Yale. Link to a biographical sketch of Fischer.
Edward Frankland: complete 1852 paper on organometallic compounds; it contains an early and clear statement of the concept of valence. (Thanks to John Park for transcription.) Link to further information on Frankland.
August Kekule: excerpt of 1865 paper on the structure of aromatic compounds. This paper is on Rod Beavon's chemistry site. (Link to further information on Kekule.)
Joseph Achille Le Bel: tetrahedral geometry of carbon (1874). This paper is at the ChemTeam site as is this photo.
Jacobus van't Hoff: optical activity and the tetrahedral geometry of carbon (1874). This paper is at the ChemTeam site. Link to a biographical sketch of van't Hoff.
A. D. Walsh, R. Robinson, C. A. McDowell, and J.W. Linnett separately discuss Walsh's proposed description of bonding in cyclopropane, 1947. These papers are at Daniel Berger's Walsh cyclopropane pages at Bluffton College.
Friedrich Wöhler: synthesis of urea from inorganic materials, conventionally regarded as fatal to the idea that organic compounds could only be produced through a "vital force." This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is this picture.
Dmitrii Mendeleev, (1871): table from Annalen, suppl. VIII, 133 (1871). This item is posted at Chris Heilman's Pictorial Periodic Table site.
Dmitrii Mendeleev: excerpt from 1871 paper on periodicity of the elements focuses on the properties of the predicted element eka-boron, now known as scandium. This paper is on Rod Beavon's chemistry site.
Dmitrii Mendeleev, (1889): Faraday lecture on the Periodic Law, 20 years after Mendeleev's first work on the subject
Julius Lothar Meyer, (1870). A table of most of the known elements arranged to show family resemblances and a figure showing atomic volumes varying periodically. (Link to further information on Meyer.)
Julius Lothar Meyer: excerpt from 1870 paper on periodicity of the elements. This paper is on Rod Beavon's chemistry site.
Henry Moseley (1913, 1914): X-ray spectra of the elements reveal integers characteristic of each element, namely the atomic number. This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is this picture and this essay on Moseley and his work.
J. A. R. Newlands, (1863, 1864, 1865, and 1866): his first attempts to find relationships among the atomic weights ("equivalents") of families of elements and accounts of his "law of octaves". The 1863 and 1864 papers are a long way from the periodic table, and even from his later law of octaves (1865 and 1866 items). (Link to a biographical sketch or view his picture in the Edgar Fahs Smith collection.)
Francis Bacon (1620): Before caloric and the kinetic theory, Bacon reviewed a wide range of observations about heat and related phenomena to illustrate his inductive scientific method, and suggested that heat is related to motion. There is even a mention of triboluminescent candy (in Table II, number 11). (Link to a biographical sketch of Bacon or to a complete text of Novum Organum.)
Joseph Black: 1803 (posthumous) paper on heat distinguished between heat and temperature and described specific heat and latent heat, even though treating heat as matter.
Rudolf Clausius: excerpts from two papers on entropy. The first (1850) notes that heat is not indestructible, and examines how it can be converted to work with the flow of heat from a warm body to a cold; the second (1865) coins the term entropy and states the second law of thermodynamics. (Link to a biographical sketch of Clausius.)
Rudolf Clausius: 1857 paper on the kinetic theory of gases; derives expressions for the pressure of a gas based from analysis of collisions for average molecular speeds.
John Dalton, excerpts from A New System of Chemistry (1808). Describes how heat (caloric) was believed to combine with matter, especially gases. (See also Lavoisier excerpt in this section.) Heat capacity of gases proposed to vary inversely with atomic weight (like law of Dulong & Petit).
Humphry Davy: from Davy's first scientific publication (1799), some insightful ideas and dubious experiments on the nature of heat and friction. (Link to a biographical sketch of Davy.)
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit: 1724 paper observing several liquids to boil at constant temperatures. (Link to biographical information on Fahrenheit.)
Cato Guldberg and Peter Waage: "Studier over Affiniteten", describing law of mass action to the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1864. This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is this picture.
Josiah Willard Gibbs: preface to Statistical Mechanics, published in 1902. This paper [pdf] is at the American Institute of Physics website. (Link to biographical information on Gibbs.)
John Herapath: excerpt of 1821 paper on kinetic theory of gases: heat is motion, and there need not be repulsive forces between gaseous atoms. Link to biographical information on Herapath.
Germain Henri Hess: 1840 paper on heats of reaction (Hess's law) This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch of Hess.)
James Prescott Joule: 1845 note on the relationship between heat and mechanical energy (the mechanical equivalent of heat). This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (View Joule's apparatus, or link to a biographical sketch of Joule.)
James Clerk Maxwell: introduces Maxwell's "demon" and its implications for the second law of thermodynamics (1872).
Julius Robert Mayer: on the conservation or interconvertability of energy (or force or vis viva, as the paper says). Click here for a biographical sketch of Mayer.
Agnes Pockels: letter on surface properties of water, sent to Lord Rayleigh and later published in Nature. This paper is at the Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics site at UCLA. (Link to biographical information on Pockels.)
Benjamin Thomson (Count Rumford): 1798 paper on the quantity and nature of the heat generated in boring a cannon. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch of Rumford.)
William Thomson (Baron Kelvin of Largs): some thoughts (not all correct--see Keith J. Laidler, The World of Physical Chemistry, pp. 99-100) on an absolute thermodynamic scale of temperature (1848). (Link to a biographical sketch of Kelvin.)
Justus Liebig: Familiar Letters on Chemistry (1843). This monograph on chemistry and some of its applications to agriculture and industry in the middle 19th century is available courtesy of Peter Childs, Limerick, Ireland.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, volumes 50-67 (1757-77). This resource is available as page images at the Internet Library of Early Journals, Bodelian Library, Oxford University. The entire volumes are posted, so this resource spans the range of natural philosophy.
Louis-Jacques Thenard: 1819 paper announces discovery of hydrogen peroxide and describes some of its properties (including some painful tests: don't try this at home)
