Timeline of classical mechanics

Classical mechanics
$\vec{F} = m\vec{a}$ Second law of motion
History Timeline
Branches Applied Celestial Continuum Dynamics Kinematics Kinetics Statics Statistical
Fundamentals Acceleration Angular momentum Couple D'Alembert's principle Energy kinetic potential Force Frame of reference Impulse Inertia / Moment of inertia Mass Mechanical power Mechanical work Moment Momentum Space Speed Time Torque Velocity Virtual work
Formulations Newtonian mechanics (vectorial mechanics) Analytical mechanics Lagrangian mechanics Hamiltonian mechanics
Core topics Damping (ratio) Displacement Equations of motion Euler's laws of motion Fictitious force Friction Harmonic oscillator Inertial / Non-inertial reference frame Mechanics of planar particle motion Motion (linear) Newton's law of universal gravitation Newton's laws of motion Relative velocity Rigid body dynamics Euler's equations Simple harmonic motion Vibration
Rotation Circular motion Rotating reference frame Centripetal force Centrifugal force reactive rotating reference frame Coriolis force Pendulum Tangential speed Rotational speed Angular acceleration / displacement / frequency / velocity
Scientists Galileo Newton Kepler Horrocks Halley Euler d'Alembert Clairaut Lagrange Laplace Hamilton Poisson Daniel Bernoulli Johann Bernoulli Cauchy

Timeline of classical mechanics:

Early Mechanics

4th century BC - Aristotle founds the system of Aristotelian physics
260 BC - Archimedes mathematically works out the principle of the lever and discovers the principle of buoyancy
60 AD - Hero of Alexandria writes Metrica, Mechanics, and Pneumatics
1021 - Al-Biruni realizes that acceleration is connected with non-uniform motion^[1]
1000-1030 - Alhazen and Avicenna develop the concepts of inertia and momentum
1100-1138 - Avempace develops the concept of a reaction force^[2]
1100-1165 - Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi discovers that force is proportional to acceleration rather than speed, a fundamental law in classical mechanics^[3]
1121 - Al-Khazini publishes The Book of the Balance of Wisdom, in which he develops the concepts of gravitational potential energy and gravity at-a-distance^[4]
1340-1358 - Jean Buridan develops the theory of impetus
1490 - Leonardo da Vinci describes capillary action
1500-1528 - Al-Birjandi develops the theory of "circular inertia" to explain Earth's rotation^[5]
1581 - Galileo Galilei notices the timekeeping property of the pendulum
1589 - Galileo Galilei uses balls rolling on inclined planes to show that different weights fall with the same acceleration
1638 - Galileo Galilei publishes Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
1658 - Christiaan Huygens experimentally discovers that balls placed anywhere inside an inverted cycloid reach the lowest point of the cycloid in the same time and thereby experimentally shows that the cycloid is the tautochrone
1668 - John Wallis suggests the law of conservation of momentum
1676-1689 - Gottfried Leibniz develops the concept of vis viva, a limited theory of conservation of energy

Formation of Classical Mechanics (sometimes referred to as Newtonian mechanics)

1687 - Isaac Newton publishes his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in which he formulates Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation
1690 - James Bernoulli shows that the cycloid is the solution to the tautochrone problem
1691 - Johann Bernoulli shows that a chain freely suspended from two points will form a catenary
1691 - James Bernoulli shows that the catenary curve has the lowest center of gravity that any chain hung from two fixed points can have
1696 - Johann Bernoulli shows that the cycloid is the solution to the brachistochrone problem
1714 - Brook Taylor derives the fundamental frequency of a stretched vibrating string in terms of its tension and mass per unit length by solving an ordinary differential equation
1733 - Daniel Bernoulli derives the fundamental frequency and harmonics of a hanging chain by solving an ordinary differential equation
1734 - Daniel Bernoulli solves the ordinary differential equation for the vibrations of an elastic bar clamped at one end
1738 - Daniel Bernoulli examines fluid flow in Hydrodynamica
1739 - Leonhard Euler solves the ordinary differential equation for a forced harmonic oscillator and notices the resonance phenomenon
1742 - Colin Maclaurin discovers his uniformly rotating self-gravitating spheroids
1743 - Jean le Rond d'Alembert publishes his "Traite de Dynamique", in which he introduces the concept of generalized forces for accelerating systems and systems with constraints
1747 - Pierre Louis Maupertuis applies minimum principles to mechanics
1759 - Leonhard Euler solves the partial differential equation for the vibration of a rectangular drum
1764 - Leonhard Euler examines the partial differential equation for the vibration of a circular drum and finds one of the Bessel function solutions
1776 - John Smeaton publishes a paper on experiments relating power, work, momentum and kinetic energy, and supporting the conservation of energy
1788 - Joseph Louis Lagrange presents Lagrange's equations of motion in Mécanique Analytique
1789 - Antoine Lavoisier states the law of conservation of mass
1813 - Peter Ewart supports the idea of the conservation of energy in his paper On the measure of moving force
1821 - William Hamilton begins his analysis of Hamilton's characteristic function
1834 - Carl Jacobi discovers his uniformly rotating self-gravitating ellipsoids
1834 - John Russell observes a nondecaying solitary water wave (soliton) in the Union Canal near Edinburgh and uses a water tank to study the dependence of solitary water wave velocities on wave amplitude and water depth
1835 - William Hamilton states Hamilton's canonical equations of motion
1835 - Gaspard Coriolis examines theoretically the mechanical efficiency of waterwheels, and deduces the Coriolis effect.
1841 - Julius Robert von Mayer, an amateur scientist, writes a paper on the conservation of energy but his lack of academic training leads to its rejection.
1842 - Christian Doppler proposes the Doppler effect
1847 - Hermann von Helmholtz formally states the law of conservation of energy
1851 - Léon Foucault shows the Earth's rotation with a huge pendulum (Foucault pendulum)
1902 - James Jeans finds the length scale required for gravitational perturbations to grow in a static nearly homogeneous medium

References

↑ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Al-Biruni", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews .:
"One of the most important of al-Biruni's many texts is Shadows which he is thought to have written around 1021. [...] Shadows is an extremely important source for our knowledge of the history of mathematics, astronomy, and physics. It also contains important ideas such as the idea that acceleration is connected with non-uniform motion, using three rectangular coordinates to define a point in 3-space, and ideas that some see as anticipating the introduction of polar coordinates."
↑ Shlomo Pines (1964), "La dynamique d’Ibn Bajja", in Mélanges Alexandre Koyré, I, 442-468 [462, 468], Paris.
(cf. Abel B. Franco (October 2003). "Avempace, Projectile Motion, and Impetus Theory", Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (4), p. 521-546 [543]: "Pines has also seen Avempace's idea of fatigue as a precursor to the Leibnizian idea of force which, according to him, underlies Newton's third law of motion and the concept of the "reaction" of forces.")
↑ Pines, Shlomo (1970). "Abu'l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī , Hibat Allah". Dictionary of Scientific Biography 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 26–28. ISBN 0-684-10114-9. :
(cf. Abel B. Franco (October 2003). "Avempace, Projectile Motion, and Impetus Theory", Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (4), p. 521-546 [528]: Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Bagdadi (c.1080- after 1164/65) extrapolated the theory for the case of falling bodies in an original way in his Kitab al-Mu'tabar (The Book of that Which is Established through Personal Reflection). [...] This idea is, according to Pines, "the oldest negation of Aristotle's fundamental dynamic law [namely, that a constant force produces a uniform motion]," and is thus an "anticipation in a vague fashion of the fundamental law of classical mechanics [namely, that a force applied continuously produces acceleration].")
↑ Mariam Rozhanskaya and I. S. Levinova (1996), "Statics", in Roshdi Rashed, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, Vol. 2, p. 614-642 [621], Routledge, London and New York
↑ F. Jamil Ragep (2001), "Tusi and Copernicus: The Earth's Motion in Context", Science in Context 14 (1-2), p. 145–163. Cambridge University Press.