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5 years ago in History of Physics By Henry

Who should be credited for the formulation of F = ma?

In preparing a lecture on the conceptual foundations of mechanics, I want to accurately represent the history. While Newton's Principia is the seminal text, his original formulation was of "change of motion" (momentum). The clean F = ma form seems to be a later distillation. I'm hoping to clarify the scholarly consensus on who should be credited for this specific, modern algebraic formulation that every student now learns.

 

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By Usha K Answered 5 years ago

This is an excellent historiographical point. For the concept, credit goes unequivocally to Newton and his Second Law in the Principia. However, for the specific algebraic formulation F = m a, historians of mechanics, like I. Bernard Cohen, argue we should look to later figures. In my reading, it was the mathematicians of the 18th century, particularly Leonhard Euler around 1750, who effectively translated Newton's geometric and proportional reasoning into the clear, analytic form we use today. Euler applied it rigorously to finite bodies, cementing it as the central equation of force. So, Newton provided the profound physical insight; Euler furnished the powerful formalism.

 

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