Some historical figures and advances in dynamics:
Aristotle (3rd century BC) first described laws of movement (separate laws for heaven and Earth).
Copernicus (16th century) - stationary sun with planets in orbit
Galileo (17th century) - proved Aristotle's laws wrong experimentally
Newton (18th century) - gravity is consistent throughout the universe and concurrently created the Calculus
Laplace (18th century) - Newtonian reduction to causal determinism
Poincaré (19th century) - planted the seed of doubts in reductionism that led to chaos theory, small changes in initial conditions lead to large differences in final outcomes