Timeline of snowflake research

BC to 1900

• 150 BCE or 135 BCE - Han Ying (韓嬰) compiled the anthology Han shi waizhuan, which includes a passage that contrasts the pentagonal symmetry of flowers with the hexagonal symmetry of snow. This is discussed further in the Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era.
• 1250 - Albertus Magnus offers what is believed to be the oldest detailed description of snow.
• 1555 - Olaus Magnus publishes the earliest snowflake diagrams in Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus.
• 1611 - Johannes Kepler, in Strenaseu De Nive Sexangula, attempts to explain why snow crystals are hexagonal.
• 1637 - René Descartes' Discourse on the Method includes hexagonal diagrams and a study for the crystallization process and conditions for snowflakes.
• 1660 - Erasmus Bartholinus, in his De figura nivis dissertatio, includes sketches of snow crystals.
• 1665 - Robert Hooke observes snow crystals under magnification in Micrographia.
• 1675 - Friedrich Martens, a German physician, catalogues 24 types of snow crystal.
• 1681 - Donato Rossetti categorizes snow crystals in La figura della neve.
• 1778 - Dutch theologian Johannes Florentius Martinet diagrams precise sketches of snow crystals.
• 1796 - Shiba Kōkan publishes sketches of ice crystals under a microscope.
• 1820 - William Scoresby's An account of the Arteic Regions includes snow crystals by type.
• 1832 - Doi Toshitsura describes and diagrams 86 types of snowflake (雪華図説).
• 1837 - Suzuki Bokushi (鈴木牧之) publishes Hokuetsu Seppu.
• 1840 - Doi Toshitsura expands his categories to include 97 types.
• 1855 - James Glaisher publishes detailed sketches of snow crystals under a microscope.
• 1865 - Frances E. Chickering publishes Cloud Crystals - a Snow-Flake Album.
• 1870 - Adolf Erik Nordenski?ld identifies "cryoconite holes."
• 1872 - John Tyndall publishes The Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers.
• 1891 - Friedrich Umlauft publishes Das Luftmeer.
• 1893 - Richard Neuhauss photographs a snowflake under a microscope, titled Schneekrystalle.
• 1894 - A. A. Sigson photographs snowflakes under a microscope.

1901 to 2000

• 1901 - Wilson Bentley publishes a series of photographs of individual snowflakes in the Monthly Weather Review.
• 1903 - Svante Arrhenius describes crystallization process in Lehrbuch der Kosmischen Physik.
• 1904 - Helge von Koch discover the fractal curves to be a mathematical description of snowflakes.
• 1931 - Wilson Bentley and William Jackson Humphreys publish Snow Crystals
• 1936 - Ukichiro Nakaya creates snow crystals and charts the relationship between temperature and water vapor saturation, later called the Nakaya Diagram.
• 1938 - Ukichiro Nakaya publishes Snow (雪)
• 1949 - Ukichiro Nakaya publishes Research of snow (雪の研究, Yuki no kenkyu)
• 1952 - Marcel R. de Quervain et al. define ten major types of snow crystals, including hail and graupel in IUGG for the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research.
• 1954 - Harvard University Press publishes Ukichiro Nakaya's Snow Crystals: Natural and Artificial.
• 1960 - Teisaku Kobayashi (小林禎作, Kobayashi Teisaku), verifies and improves the Nakaya Diagram with the Kobayashi Diagram.
• 1962 - Cyoji Magono (孫野長治, Magono Cyōji) describes meteorological sorting of snow crystal types in clouds.
• 1979 - Toshio Kuroda (黒田登志雄, Kuroda Toshio) and Rolf Lacmann, of the Braunschweig University of Technology, publish Growth Mechanism of Ice from Vapour Phase and its Growth Forms.
• 1983 August - Astronauts make snow crystals in orbit on the Space Shuttle Challenger during mission STS-8.
• 1988 - Norihiko Fukuta (福田矩彦, Fukuta Norihiko) et al. make artificial snow crystals in an updraft, confirming the Nakaya Diagram.

2001 and after

• 2002 - Kazuhiko Hiramatsu (平松和彦, Hiramatsu Kazuhiko) devises a simple snow crystal growth observatory apparatus using a PET bottle cooled by dry ice in an expanded polystyrene box.
• 2004 September - Akio Murai (村井昭夫, Murai Akio) invented the apparatus named lit. Murai-method Artificial Snow Crystal producer (Murai式人工雪結晶生成装置) which makes various shape of artificial snow crystals per pre-setting conditions meeting to Nakaya diagram by vapor generator and its cooling Peltier effect element.
• 2008 December - Yoshinori Furukawa (吉川義純, FurukawaYoshinori) demonstrates conditional snow crystal growth in space, in Solution Crystallization Observation Facility (SCOF) on the JEM (Kibō), remotely controlled from Tsukuba Space Center of JAXA.