Atlas Trail
Fields Assembled, Not Founded: Earth Science and Solid-State Physics
Not every field in this atlas began with one founder and one date. This wave minted two disciplines, Earth Science and Solid-State Physics, that instead consolidated older, separately grown branches into a single named field, and this trail traces the branches and founders that make up each one.
Stop 1 of 7.
Disciplines
Earth Science: the umbrella this wave minted for the planet's natural sciences, its solid geosphere, water, atmosphere and biosphere, with no single founding year because its own branches grew up on separate timelines.
Stop 2 of 7.
Disciplines
Geology: the founding branch, recorded as founded by James Hutton.
Stop 3 of 7.
Disciplines
Geophysics: founded by Carl Friedrich Gauss, and recorded as part of both Earth Science and Physics, one discipline claimed by two parent fields.
Stop 4 of 7.
Disciplines
Oceanography: founded by Charles Wyville Thomson, the branch charting the planet's oceans.
Stop 5 of 7.
Disciplines
Meteorology: one of Earth Science's constituent branches, which this wave notes grew up on its own timeline rather than under one founding moment.
Stop 6 of 7.
Disciplines
Paleontology: founded by Georges Cuvier, and recorded as part of both Biology and Earth Science, the fossil record claimed by life's science and the planet's alike.
Stop 7 of 7.
Disciplines
Solid-State Physics: minted this wave as the field that consolidated crystallography, metallurgy, elasticity and magnetism by the 1940s, its arrival marked by the 1947 transistor, invented at Bell Labs by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley.
Create an account to keep this trail. Saving copies its stops into a collection of your own, which you can add to, reorder and share.
Where you have got to in this trail is kept by your own browser and is never sent to us. Clearing your browser data clears it. All trails.