Dalton's Atomic Theory

In 1808, John Dalton published a work titled 'A New System of Chemical Philosophy', in which he set out a theory of matter that later came to be known as Dalton's atomic theory. Its main features are: (1) matter is made up of tiny, indivisible particles called atoms; (2) all the atoms of a given element are identical to one another, including in mass, while atoms belonging to different elements differ from each other in mass; (3) compounds are formed when atoms of different elements combine together in a fixed, whole-number ratio; and (4) chemical reactions involve only the reorganisation of atoms — atoms themselves are neither created nor destroyed during a chemical reaction. What made this theory so powerful was that it could explain, from these few simple postulates alone, every one of the earlier laws of chemical combination — conservation of mass, definite proportions, and multiple propor …