Isaac Newton is credited with discovering the laws of universal gravitation. He formulated the law of universal gravitation, which states that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This means that the force of gravity between two objects decreases as the distance between them increases and increases as the masses of the objects increase.
Newton's laws of motion, specifically his second law, also played a role in his understanding of gravity. He realized that the force of gravity acting on an object is directly related to its mass and the acceleration it experiences. This led to the concept of gravitational force, which governs the motion of objects on Earth and in space.
Overall, Newton's discoveries and mathematical formulations regarding gravity revolutionized our understanding of the natural world and laid the foundation for the field of classical mechanics.