1687
Europe · Science
A 500-page argument that gravity is a number.
Newton Publishes Principia
July 5, 1687
After eighteen months of obsessive labor in his Cambridge rooms, Isaac Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in three slim Latin volumes. Three laws of motion and one law of gravitation explained why apples fall and planets orbit using the same mathematics. The universe had been unified on paper, and natural philosophy had its greatest single achievement.