The theory of the atom would remain unproven until 1803, when an English scientist presented the proof.
John Dalton was born in poverty in Eaglesfield, England, in 1766.
He was such a genius at mathematics when he was young that the village allowed him to open up his own school at the age of 12.
Dalton later became a teacher of mathematics and science at Manchester College, but his first love was meteorology.
It was his study of Earth’s atmosphere that led to the most important discovery in the history of chemistry, the discovery of the atom.
Dalton was the first scientist to prove that rain is caused by a decrease in temperature, not a change in atmospheric pressure.
Dalton wrote a book on meteorology that included a correct explanation of aurora borealis as a magnetic phenomenon.
John Dalton developed chemical symbols in the early 1800s.
He used these symbols in a table of atomic weights, which made chemistry a truly quantitative, or measurable, science.
