Who originated the proposition of the theory of gravitation?
Le Sage's theory of gravitation Le Sage's theory of gravitation is a kinetic theory of gravity originally proposed by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in 1690 and later by Georges-Louis Le Sage in 1748. The theory proposed a mechanical explanation for Newton's gravitational force in terms of streams of tiny unseen particles (which Le Sage called ultra-mundane corpuscles) impacting all material objects from all directions. According to this model, any two material bodies partially shield each other from the impinging corpuscles, resulting in a net imbalance in the pressure exerted by the impact of corpuscles on the bodies, tending to drive the bodies together. This mechanical explanation for gravity never gained widespread acceptance, although it continued to be studied occasionally by physicists until the beginning of the 20th century, by which time it was generally considered to be conclusively discredited.
Clairaut's theorem Clairaut's theorem is a general mathematical law giving the surface gravity on a viscous rotating ellipsoid in equilibrium under the action of its gravitational field and centrifugal force. It was published in 1743 by Alexis Claude Clairaut in his "Théorie de la figure de la terre, tirée des principes de l'hydrostatique" ("Theory of the shape of the earth, drawn from the principles of hydrostatics") which synthesized physical and geodetic evidence that the Earth is an oblate rotational ellipsoid. It was initially used to relate the gravity at any point on the Earth's surface to the position of that point, allowing the ellipticity of the Earth to be calculated from measurements of gravity at different latitudes. Today it has been largely supplanted by the Somigliana equation.