Classical physics - A timeline of Mechanics

Question

As a chemist we never really use classical mechanics much instead favouring a quantum description of the world around us. I have been lectured plenty on the origins of quantum mechanics and how the early pioneers forged away to develop ultimately quantum field theory. However I have very little idea about the analogous timeline of classical mechanics!

As such I will list my understanding but would love it if someone could fill in the blanks! (I'm starting at Newton and after more modern scientists :)

1) Newton

2) d'Alembert

3) Lagrange

4) Hamilton

5) Poisson

6) Liouville

7) Poincare

8) Noether

@AlexandreEremenko Lagrange and Newton are supposed to have the same number, right? — HDE 226868, Nov 20 '14 at 19:38
@HDE 226868 I do not understand your question. What is the meaning of these numbers? — Alexandre Eremenko, Nov 20 '14 at 20:04
@AlexandreEremenko I meant that Lagrange and Newton both were next to a '4', implying that they worked in the same time period (i.e. at the same point in chronological order). It doesn't matter now, though, because you fixed it. — HDE 226868, Nov 20 '14 at 21:28
@HDE 226868: Lagrange and Newton did not work at the same time. Lagrange was born 10 years after the death of Newton. — Alexandre Eremenko, Feb 19 '24 at 12:41

Alexandre Eremenko · Accepted Answer · 2024-02-19T12:43:31.463

4

Here are some crucial contributors that are missing:

Archimedes (statics, including hydrostatics)

Stevin (Guido Jorg suggestion)

Galileo (relativity principle, pendulum, falling bodies etc.)

Huygens (pendulum, oscillations, Huygens principle)

Hooke (Hooke's Law, Inverse squares law)

Daniel Bernoulli (hydrodynamics)

Clairaut (perturbation methods, figures of equilibrium)

Euler (contributed to almost everything, motion of rigid bodies, for example, Euler-Lagrange equations, perturbation theory)

Laplace (celestial mechanics)

Jacobi (integrable systems)

Lindstedt (perturbation methods)

Hill (perturbation methods)

Lyapunov (stability, figures of equilibrium)

Birkhoff (closed orbits, ergodic theory)

Fatou, Bogolyubov, Krylov ("non-linear mechanics")

von Neumann (ergodic theory)

Siegel (stability)

Kolmogorov, Arnold, Moser (KAM theory)

I omitted: statistical mechanics (which is also mechanics!), most of the fluid mechanics after Archimedes and Bernoulli) and relativistic mechanics.

edited Feb 19 '24 at 12:43

answered Nov 19 '14 at 13:54

Alexandre Eremenko

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Some more: stevinus (quite a few discoveries), spinoza+leibnitz (elasticity), cauchy (like Euler, contributed to almost everything in mechanics), clifford+gibbs (formulism of mechanics) – Gottfried William Nov 19 '14 at 16:39
wow a brilliant list! thank you very much :) – RedPen Nov 19 '14 at 19:24
@Guido Jorg: I agree about Stevin. What Spinosa contributed?? Benedict Spinosa? Have never heard of his contribution to physics or mathematics. Can you give a reference? About Clifford and Cauchy I also did not know. What did they contribute? And Gibbs is associated with statistical mechanics (which I omitted). – Alexandre Eremenko Nov 20 '14 at 00:59
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@Guido Jorg: Why don't you write your own answer, complementing the list, with a brief indication what exactly these people contributed to mechanics. Very interesting! – Alexandre Eremenko Nov 20 '14 at 01:05
Maybe Buridan and Oresme for Middle Ages? From Islamic world maybe Ibn Sina? Also where is Kepler? – Mauricio Feb 19 '24 at 10:57

Classical physics - A timeline of Mechanics

1 Answers1