Sir Isaac Newton is credited with formulating the law of universal gravitation. This law, which describes the gravitational attraction between two masses, was first published in his seminal work, "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," in 1687. Newton's law explains how gravity governs the motion of celestial bodies and objects on Earth, establishing the force of gravity as proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. His groundbreaking ideas laid the foundation for classical mechanics and transformed our understanding of the physical universe.