Newton's laws of motion were published in the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, one of the most important works in the history of science, which appeared with the support of the astronomer Edmond Halley, who encouraged and paid for its printing. The first law says that a body stays at rest or in uniform motion unless a force acts on it, the second that its acceleration is proportional to the force and inversely to its mass, and the third that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the same book Isaac Newton presented the law of universal gravitation. Together they explained the motion of planets and falling objects and formed the foundation of classical mechanics, later refined by relativity and quantum theory.
Before and after
- 1686Founding of Greenfield
- from 1686 to 1700Third Russo-Turkish War
- 24 May 1686Birth of Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
- 1687Publication of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
- 5 July 1687Newton's laws of motion
- from 1688 to 1807Jacobitism
- from 1688 to 1815Second Hundred Years' War
- 1688Founding of Newton
- from 1688 to 1759Dzungar–Qing Wars
More in Science & technology
- 15 February 1564Birth of Galileo Galilei
- 25 December 1642Birth of Isaac Newton
- 1654Magdeburg hemispheres
- October 1684Leibniz publishes the first paper on calculus
- 20 March 1727Death of Isaac Newton
- 28 August 1749Birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The era
This moment belongs to the Early modern world (1500 CE to 1760 CE), voyages, printing and new ideas. You can also browse everything in the 17th century.
