De motu corporum in gyrum

De motu corporum in gyrum[a] (from Latin: "On the motion of bodies in an orbit"; abbreviated De Motu[b]) is the presumed title of a manuscript by Isaac Newton sent to Edmond Halley in November 1684. The manuscript was prompted by a visit from Halley earlier that year when he had questioned Newton about problems then occupying the minds of Halley and his scientific circle in London, including Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke.

This manuscript gave important mathematical derivations relating to the three relations now known as "Kepler's laws of planetary motion" (before Newton's work, these had not been generally regarded as scientific laws).[2] Halley reported the communication from Newton to the Royal Society on 10 December 1684 (Old Style).[3] After further encouragement from Halley, Newton went on to develop and write his book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (commonly known as the Principia) from a nucleus that can be seen in De Motu – of which nearly all of the content also reappears in the Principia.

  1. ^ D T Whiteside (ed.), Mathematical Papers of Isaac newton, vol. 6 (1684–1691), (Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 30–91.
  2. ^ Curtis Wilson: "From Kepler's Laws, so-called, to Universal Gravitation: Empirical Factors", in Archives for History of the Exact Sciences, 6 (1970), pp. 89–170.
  3. ^ Gondhalekar, Prabhakar (2005). The Grip of Gravity: The Quest to Understand the Laws of Motion and Gravitation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521018678.


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