Investigations of Tides from the Antiquity to Laplace

Tidal phenomena along the coasts were known since the prehistoric era, but a long journey of investigations through the centuries was necessary from the Greco-Roman Antiquity to the modern era to unravel in a quasi-definitive way many secrets of the ebb and flow. These investigations occupied the great scholars from Aristotle to Galileo, Newton, Euler, d'Alembert, Laplace, and the list could go on. We will review the historical steps which contributed to an increasing understanding of the tides.