Publication of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Isaac Newton's masterwork set out the three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, using rigorous mathematics. In three books it explained the motion of falling bodies, projectiles, tides and the planets, and showed that Kepler's laws of planetary motion followed from an inverse-square gravitational force. Edmond Halley urged Newton to write it and oversaw and paid for the printing, which was issued by the Royal Society. The work, written in Latin, became the foundation of classical mechanics and the model for mathematical physics. Newton revised it in two later editions, and it remained the standard account of motion until Einstein's relativity.

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