Pierre Boulos (University of Windsor) - It is said that on his deathbed Newton claimed that the one thing that made his head ache is the “lunar problem.” Newton’s successors inherited three major research projects: the shape of the earth, Halley’s Comet, and the perturbation of the lunar orbit, or the lunar problem. Of these the latter drew the attention of the foremost mathematicians and philosophers of the eighteenth century. Curiously it was through the meetings of learned societies, and consequently the publication in journals, that the debate over Newton’s theory was finally resolved. This paper charts this debate and illustrates its importance in understanding Newton’s scientific methodology. Specifically, in considering the effect of the sun on the moon in her orbit, Newton was able to account for only half of the observed lunar precession. The solution to this problem came in the late 1740s and early 1750s through the work of Clairaut, d'Alembert, and Euler. The zero precession left over after the effect of the sun on the lunar orbit had been correctly solved removed impediments to the acceptance of Newton's system.
