Owing to its simple formulation and intractable nature, along with its application to the lunar theory, the three-body problem has since it was first studied by Newton in the Principia attracted the attention of many of the world's most gifted mathematicians and astronomers. Two of these, Euler and Lagrange, discovered the problem's first periodic solutions. However, it was not until Hill's discovery in the late 1870s of the variational orbit that the importance of the periodic solutions was fully recognized, most notably by Poincare, but also by others such as Sir George Darwin. The book...
Owing to its simple formulation and intractable nature, along with its application to the lunar theory, the three-body problem has since it was first ...