John Dalton and the Atomic Theory
Born in obscutiry to a Quaker family in England in 1766, John Dalton would eventually become one of the most famous scientists of the 19th century. When he died in 1844, more than 40,000 people in his adopted city of Manchester, England turned out to honor him. The master of his own school at the age of 12, he had a curiosity about the world around him for his entire life. He spent many hours in research in a wide variety of subjects, and eventually settled on atoms. Even though he couldn't see them, he was able to calculate their weight and the way in which they interacted with other atoms. His atomic theory eventually formed one of the corner-stones of modern chemistry and physics.
