Key Takeaways:
- Newton's Principia, published in 1687, revolutionized physics.
- Many of its key ideas originated during Newton's 1666 plague-induced countryside retreat.
- Halley's question about planetary orbits spurred Newton to complete Principia.
- Principia, written in Latin, explained motion on Earth and in space using three laws.
Isaac Newton‘s monumental book, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, was published July 5, 1687. Newton had developed the foundational ideas for the work as early as 1666, when an outbreak of plague shut down Cambridge University, where he was a student, and drove him to the countryside. There he spent two years conceiving many of his biggest principles and theorems, including the groundwork for understanding gravity. In 1684, a query from Edmond Halley about planetary orbits prompted Newton to expand on that earlier work. Newton, then a professor at Cambridge, initially wrote a tract called De Motu that November; over the next two and a half years, De Motu evolved into Principia. The book, written in Latin and financed by Halley, is recognized a seminal scientific text, with Newton’s three laws of motion offering a framework for understanding terrestrial and celestial mechanics.
