Who discovered the conservation laws

The laws of conservation 

Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law of conservation of momentum. He did this when he formulated his laws of motion. It

The Law of Conservation of Mass dates from Antoine Lavoisier's 1789 discovery that mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions. In other words, the mass of any one element at the beginning of a reaction will equal the mass of that element at the end of the reaction.

Between 1842 and 1847, Julius Robert von Mayer , James Prescott Joule , and Hermann von Helmholtz discovered and formulated the basics of what we refer to today as the law of conservation of energy: Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another.

The History of the Word "Energy"

The word “energy” comes from the Greek enérgeia. Developed by Aristotle, enérgeia has no direct translation to English. It is frequently described as “being at work”.

Although the term English “energy” acquired its current definition (meaning the quantitative property that must be transferred to an object to perform work or heat the object) in the 19th century, the ideas behind the concept began forming at the end of the 17th century, when the term was first used in English to refer to “power”.

By 1686, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz had developed concepts that correspond to our current understanding of kinetic and potential mechanical energy. However, he didn’t use the term “energy”.

Thomas Young first introduced the word “energy” to the field of physics in 1800, but the word did not gain popularity. Young later established the wave nature of light through interference experiments. The related term “work” was defined in 1828/29 by Gustave Gaspard de Coriolis and Jean-Victor Poncelet .

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

(1646 − 1716)

Thomas Young

(1773 − 1829)

Gustave Gaspard de Coriolis

(1792 − 1843)

Jean-Victor Poncelet

(1788 − 1867)

Between 1842 and 1847, Julius Robert von Mayer , James Prescott Joule , and Hermann von Helmholtz discovered and formulated the basics of what we refer to today as the law of conservation of energy:

Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another.

Instead of the word “energy”, however, they used the terms “living force”, “tensional force” or “fall-force”.

Julius Robert von Mayer

(1814 − 1878)

James Prescott Joule

(1818 − 1889)

Hermann von Helmholtz

(1821 − 1894)

In 1851 − 1852, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and William J. M. Rankine began to use the word “energy” to denote any kind of “force” across all branches of science. Finally, in 1905, Albert Einstein established the general equivalence of energy and mass with his theory of relativity. From there, the concept of “energy” was generalized into the form used today.

William Thomson

(1824 − 1907)

William J. M. Rankine

(1820 − 1872)

Albert Einstein

(1879 − 1955)

Light and energy 

Light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our knowledge. - Werner Heisenberr

All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, 'What are light quanta?' Nowadays every Tom, D i c k and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken. - Albert Einstein

It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. - Richard Feynman

Light is visible frequency oscillating electricity atoms carried. Energy is oscillating electricity coexisting with atoms. - Joe Chang 

If god knows not how atoms are constructed there would be no creation.  Joe Chang  2023