The concept of gravitational force is most famously associated with Sir Isaac Newton, who formulated the law of universal gravitation in the late 17th century. In his landmark work, ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica’, published in 1687, Newton proposed that every mass attracts every other mass in the universe with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.
The discovery of gravitational force was not a singular event but rather a culmination of various scientific developments. Before Newton, scientists like Galileo had already begun to study the effects of gravity on objects in motion. Newton’s contribution was to provide a comprehensive framework that explained not just the force between two objects on Earth, but also the forces acting on celestial bodies.
Thus, while Newton is often credited with the discovery of gravitational force, it is important to recognize the contributions of earlier thinkers and the scientific community that laid the groundwork for his theories.