History of Gravitation

In physics, many theories of gravitation put forward mechanisms of interaction governing the movements of bodies with mass. There have been a number of theories of gravitation since ancient times. A Greek philosopher Aristotle (f. 4th century BC) had faith that objects tend towards a point due to their inner gravitas i.e. heaviness. Vitruvius in 1st century BC understood that the objects fall based on their specific gravity. In 5th/6th-century AD an Indian mathematician, Aryabhata developed a great geocentric model incorporating gravity and in the 7th century, Brahmagupta spoke about gravity as an attractive force.

Initially, the Aristotelian concept of gravity began to be rejected, by the Islamic physicists. Afterwards Abu'l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī explained the gravitational acceleration, and stated it as the acceleration of falling bodies due to the accumulation of successive increments of power in combination with successive increments of velocity. Works of Ibn Sina and al-Baghdādī were rendered into Latin by influencing Jean Buridan and Albert of Saxony. In The same century, Oxford's Merton College developed mean speed theorem.

During the early 17th century, Galileo Galilei discovered that all objects always tend to accelerate equally in a free fall. Later In 1632, he put forward the basic principle of relativity. Basically the existence of the gravitational constant was explored by numerous researchers during the mid-17th century, helping Isaac Newton put together his law of universal gravitation.

By: Prerana Sharma

Content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gravitational_theory