Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

John Dalton, the father of the Chemical Atomic Theory, was born on September 6, 1766 in Cumberland, England and died in Manchester on July 27, 1844. He is best known for developing an atomic theory in which the elements are characterized by different sizes and weights. In addition, he is also known for the Law of Definite Proportions, and the Law of Multiple Proportions. Dalton began to study the amount of various elements in chemical reactions. With a series of detailed experiments, he discovered that the proportions of elements in chemical reactions could be described as ratios of simple integers. He knew that hydrogen was the lightest known element and established that it had the atomic number of 1. By doing this, he could discover the weights of other elements by using hydrogen’s mass. Dalton identified four basic ideas for the chemical atomic theory. First, elements are made up of atoms. This illustrates that elements consist of atoms, or particles that are indestructible and indivisible. As we know today, elements are chemical substances that cannot be altered by chemical means. Second, atoms composed of the same element have identical properties, including weight. This leads to the third idea, that atoms of different ele