Francis Hauksbee performed some of the earliest observations and experiments in 1709 and these were repeated in 1718 by James Jurin who observed that the height of fluid in a capillary column was a function only of the cross-sectional area at the surface, not of any other dimensions of the column.
Thomas Young laid the foundations of the equation in his 1804 paper An Essay on the Cohesion of Fluids where he set out in descriptive terms the principles governing contact between fluids (along with many other aspects of fluid behaviour).  Pierre Simon Laplace followed this up in Mécanique Céleste with the formal mathematical description given above, which reproduced in symbolic terms the relationship described earlier by Young.
Laplace accepted the idea propounded by Hauksbee in his book Physico-mechanical Experiments (1709), that the phenomenon was due to a force of attraction that was insensible at sensible distances. The part which deals with the action of a solid on a liquid and the mutual action of two liquids was not worked out thoroughly, but ultimately was completed by Carl Friedrich Gauss. Franz Ernst Neumann (1798-1895) later filled in a few details.