As a physics undergraduate at MIT in the 1960s, Jearl Walker wasn’t exposed to cutting-edge topics in physics. At least not in the classroom. He remembers sneaking into a seminar, listening in amazement as Johns Hopkins University’s Riccardo Giacconi described his team’s detection of the first extrasolar x-ray source in the universe. “I was really impressed by that, that there were still discoveries being made,” Walker says.

Now a physics professor at Cleveland State University, Walker shares those mysteries with students in the classroom through his book The Flying Circus of Physics and by way of the physics curriculum. For the past 30 years, he’s authored all of the new editions of the classic textbook Fundamentals of Physics by David Halliday and Robert Resnick.

The introductory physics curriculum hasn’t changed much over the years. The core topics are tightly constrained, but Walker still strives to incorporate the latest discoveries into each successive edition, searching through some 200 journals for new developments that he can turn into examples.

In third-semester physics, when modern physics comes up, Walker packs in every new and exciting topic that will fit. Dark matter. The expansion of the universe. John Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment. He brings up all the mysteries that he “sure as heck hopes [physicists] solve before I die.”

If instructors and textbook authors aren’t careful, undergraduates can easily get the impression that everything in physics was figured out 200 years ago. But the topics that really capture the interest of students are the unknowns—the mysteries, according to Walker. “That’s what excites students.”

Those mysteries aren’t static. As a Radiations reader, you know that the field of physics is constantly evolving. Existing mysteries are being solved, new mysteries are being discovered, and previous solutions are being modified all the time. But what does that mean for the next generation of physicists, and how are their experiences different from ours?
With this question in mind, we hope you enjoy this look back at recent developments in physics, presented relative to the educational milestones of the average class of 2020 physics graduate.

Notes:

• For simplicity, we assumed the average graduate is earning a physics bachelor’s degree in four years and entered the program at age 18.
• New developments don’t always happen at a defined moment. One could argue that some of these events should technically be attributed to a different year.
• It’s not always clear who should be credited for a particular development. In this timeline, we’ve chosen to note the collaboration and/or the physicists commonly associated with that development, with the emphasis on the development itself.
• This is not an exhaustive list of important developments.
• Feel free to share your thoughts on this timeline with us at spsnational [at] aip.org.

1950s |  Four decades before graduate is born

1952:

• Development of the first optical fiber (Kapany)

1953:

• Helical structure of DNA discovered (Franklin, Watson, Crick)
• First computer language developed (Hopper)
• First MASER developed (Townes, Gordon, Zieger)

1954:

• Construction on CERN begins
• First transistor radio (Texas Instruments)

1956:

• Discovery of the electron neutrino (Reines, Cowan)

1957:

• Launch of the first artificial satellite into orbit (Russia)
• Development of the theory of superconductivity (Bardeen, Cooper, Schrieffer)

1958:

• Invention of the integrated circuit (Kilby, Noyce)
• Defining paper on medical diagnostic ultrasound is published (Donald)

1960s |  Three decades before graduate is born

• Invention of the first laser (Townes)

1961:

• First time a person orbits the Earth (Gagarin)

1964:

• Quarks model proposed (Gell-Mann, Zweig)

1962:

• MOSFET invented (Hofstein, Heiman)

1965:

• Discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation (Penzias , Wilson)

1967:

• First discovery of a pulsar (Bell Burnell, Hewish)
• CT scanning is proposed (Hounsfield)
• Invention of the first handheld calculator (Kilby)

1969:

• First person on the moon (Armstrong)

1970s |  Two decades before graduate is born

1970:

• First personal computer available for purchase (Blankenbaker)
• Black holes revealed as common features of general relativity (Hawking, Penrose)
• First CD-ROM patented (Russell)

1971:

• Invention of the floppy disc (Shugart)
• First patient brain scanned with CT

1972:

• First strong evidence for black holes (Bolton)

1973:

• Production of the first MRI images (Lauterbur)

1974:

• Discovery of the charmed quark (Richter and Ting)
• Development of the PET camera (Phelps)

1975:

• Invention of the first digital camera (Sasson)

1977:

• Discovery of the bottom quark (Fermilab)

1980s  |  One decade before graduate is born

1980:

• Quantum computing proposed (Feynman)

1981:

• Invention of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (Binnig, Rohrer)

1984:

• First observations of the W and Z bosons (CERN)

1986:

• Space shuttle Challenger breaks apart shortly after launch, killing all seven crew members
• Invention of the atomic force microscope (Binnig, Quate, Gerber)
• First demonstration of optical tweezers (Ashkin)

1987:

• Topological insulators predicted (Pankratov)

1988:

• Discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance (Fert, Grunberg)

1990s 

1990:

• Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope

1992:

• Arguably the first confirmed discovery of exoplanets (Wolszczan, Frail)
• First measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (COBE collaboration)

1995:

• Creation of the first Bose-Einstein condensate (Cornell, Wieman)
• Discovery of the top quark (CDF, D0 experiments at Fermilab)

1996:

• Work begins on the James Webb Space Telescope

1998: 

• Graduate is born
• First evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating (Supernova Cosmology Project team, High-Z team)
• Construction begins on the International Space Station

2000s  

2000:

• First crew resides on the International Space Station
• Optical Frequency Comb technique developed (Hall, Hansch)

2003:

• Graduate starts kindergarten
• Space shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry, killing all seven crew members

2004:

• Graphene is rediscovered (Geim, Novoselov)

2006:

• Pluto is demoted

2007:

• Release of the first iPhone (Apple Inc)
• First synthesis of a topological instulator, in 2D (König and colleagues)

2008:

• First run of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

2009:

• Graduate enters middle school

2010s

2012:

• Graduate enters high school
• Discovery of the Higgs boson (ATLAS, CMS collaborations)

2013:

• First Discovery of naturally occurring topological insulators (Gehring)

2016:

• Graduate enters college
• First detection of gravitational waves (LIGO and Virgo collaborations)

2017:

• Cassini flies between Saturn and its rings in a “grand finale” ending

2019:

• First image of a black hole (Event Horizon Telescope)

2020s |  Graduate receives a physics bachelor’s degree