The concept of gravity, as we understand it today, was not so much ‘discovered’ in a single year as it was developed over time. However, a significant milestone occurred in 1687 when Sir Isaac Newton published his work ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.’ In this seminal work, he formulated the law of universal gravitation, which described gravity as a force that acts at a distance between masses.
Prior to Newton, some ideas about gravity were discussed by earlier thinkers such as Galileo Galilei, who studied the motion of objects, and Johannes Kepler, who explored planetary motion. Nevertheless, it was Newton’s formulation that truly shaped our modern understanding of gravity, providing the mathematical framework that still underpins classical physics today.