Poincare and the Three Body Problem (History of Mathematics, V. 11) (History of Mathematics, 11)The idea of chaos figures prominently in mathematics today. It arose in the work of one of the greatest mathematicians of the late 19th century, Henri Poincar, on a problem in celestial mechanics: the three body problem. This ancient problem to describe the paths of three bodies in mutual gravitational interaction is one of those which is simple to pose but impossible to solve precisely. Poincar's famous memoir on the three body problem arose from his