  This paper presents a brief account of the important milestones in the
historical development of the theory of differential equations. The paper
begins with a discussion on the date of birth of differential equations and
then touches upon Newton's approach to differential equations. Then the
development of the various methods for solving the first order differential
equations and the second order linear differential equations are discussed. The
paper concludes with a brief mention of the series solutions of differential
equations and the qualitative study of differential equations.
