Wilhelm Ostwald

Wilhelm Ostwald, a founder of physical chemistry, was the best-known opponent of atoms around 1900, arguing that chemistry should be built on energy alone. In 1909, in the preface to a new edition of his textbook, he wrote that experiments by Jean Perrin on Brownian motion and by J. J. Thomson on the electron now gave proof of the atomic nature of matter. He won the Nobel prize in chemistry the same year.