Gravity
- Year(s) Officially Discovered: 230 to 260 BCE, 40 to 10 BCE, 16th to 17th Centuries A.D.
- Discovery Put Into Action: Late B.C. Period, With Modern-Gravitational Theory Being Used By the 17th Century
- Team/Person Behind The Discovery: Archimedes, Vitruvius, Galileo Galilei, Sir Issac Newton
A lot of people only think about Issac Newton when it comes to the discovery of gravity, but mankind knew about gravity for hundreds of years before this. In fact, Archimedes of Syracuse actually discovered the center of gravity of a triangle. Based on Mathematics, which he also pioneered, he hypothesized that if two equal weights did not have the exact same center of gravity…then the center of gravity regarding the two weights would meet in the middle of a line they combine their gravity.
However, it was the modern-form of the gravitational theory that truly revolutionized everything…and that started with Galileo. He dropped balls as well as other objects off the Tower of Pisa to prove a point about gravity. Air Resistance is to blame for objects with less mass falling slower than heavier objects. All of this opened up one of the greatest discoveries in modern history, where Issac Newton came into play.
In likely the greatest Mathematics book ever published, Principia, Newton established the universal law of gravitation. He wrote:
“I deduced that the forces which keep the planets in their orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve: and thereby compared the force required to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the Earth; and found them answer pretty nearly.”