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Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (: Mécanique Céleste Celestial Mechanics

Pierre-Simon Laplace was a highly influential French scholar from the 18th century. He made significant contributions across many fields, including mathematics, physics, astronomy, and statistics. In his work, he summarized and expanded on the theories of his predecessors. One of his most important works was Mécanique Céleste, a 5-volume treatise on celestial mechanics that translated the subject from a geometric to a calculus-based approach. Laplace also developed concepts like Laplace's equation and the Laplace transform, and postulated ideas like the nebular hypothesis of solar system formation and the existence of black holes. He was regarded as one of the greatest scientists of his time.

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81 views4 pages

Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (: Mécanique Céleste Celestial Mechanics

Pierre-Simon Laplace was a highly influential French scholar from the 18th century. He made significant contributions across many fields, including mathematics, physics, astronomy, and statistics. In his work, he summarized and expanded on the theories of his predecessors. One of his most important works was Mécanique Céleste, a 5-volume treatise on celestial mechanics that translated the subject from a geometric to a calculus-based approach. Laplace also developed concepts like Laplace's equation and the Laplace transform, and postulated ideas like the nebular hypothesis of solar system formation and the existence of black holes. He was regarded as one of the greatest scientists of his time.

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Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace 

(/ləˈplɑːs/; French: [pjɛʁ simɔ̃
laplas]; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar
and polymath whose work was important to the development
of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy,
and philosophy. He summarized and extended the work of his
predecessors in his five-volume Mécanique Céleste (Celestial
Mechanics) (1799–1825). This work translated the geometric
study of classical mechanics to one based on calculus, opening
up a broader range of problems. In statistics, the Bayesian
interpretation of probability was developed mainly by Laplace.[2]
Laplace formulated Laplace's equation, and pioneered
the Laplace transform which appears in many branches
of mathematical physics, a field that he took a leading role in
forming. The Laplacian differential operator, widely used in
mathematics, is also named after him. He restated and developed
the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the Solar System and was
one of the first scientists to postulate the existence of black
holes and the notion of gravitational collapse.
Laplace is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all
time. Sometimes referred to as the French Newton or Newton of
France, he has been described as possessing a phenomenal
natural mathematical faculty superior to that of any of his
contemporaries.[3] He was Napoleon's examiner
when Napoleon attended the École Militaire in Paris in 1784.
Laplace became a count of the Empire in 1806 and was named
a marquis in 1817, after the Bourbon Restoration.
Early years[edit]
Portrait of Pierre-Simon Laplace by Johann Ernst Heinsius (1775)

Some details of Laplace's life are not known, as records of it were


burned in 1925 with the family château in Saint Julien de Mailloc,
near Lisieux, the home of his great-great-grandson the Comte de
Colbert-Laplace. Others had been destroyed earlier, when his
house at Arcueil near Paris was looted in 1871.[4]
Laplace was born in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy on 23 March
1749, a village four miles west of Pont l'Évêque. According to W.
W. Rouse Ball,[5] his father, Pierre de Laplace, owned and farmed
the small estates of Maarquis. His great-uncle, Maitre Oliver de
Laplace, had held the title of Chirurgien Royal. It would seem that
from a pupil he became an usher in the school at Beaumont; but,
having procured a letter of introduction to d'Alembert, he went to
Paris to advance his fortune. However, Karl Pearson[4] is scathing
about the inaccuracies in Rouse Ball's account and states:
Indeed Caen was probably in Laplace's day the most intellectually
active of all the towns of Normandy. It was here that Laplace was
educated and was provisionally a professor. It was here he wrote
his first paper published in the Mélanges of the Royal Society of
Turin, Tome iv. 1766–1769, at least two years before he went at
22 or 23 to Paris in 1771. Thus before he was 20 he was in touch
with Lagrange in Turin. He did not go to Paris a raw self-taught
country lad with only a peasant background! In 1765 at the age of
sixteen Laplace left the "School of the Duke of Orleans" in
Beaumont and went to the University of Caen, where he appears
to have studied for five years and was a member of the Sphinx.
The 'École Militaire' of Beaumont did not replace the old school
until 1776.
His parents, Pierre Laplace and Marie-Anne Sochon, were from
comfortable families. The Laplace family was involved in
agriculture until at least 1750, but Pierre Laplace senior was also
a cider merchant and syndic of the town of Beaumont.
Pierre Simon Laplace attended a school in the village run at
a Benedictine priory, his father intending that he be ordained in
the Roman Catholic Church. At sixteen, to further his father's
intention, he was sent to the University of Caen to read theology.[6]
At the university, he was mentored by two enthusiastic teachers
of mathematics, Christophe Gadbled and Pierre Le Canu, who
awoke his zeal for the subject. Here Laplace's brilliance as a
mathematician was quickly recognised and while still at Caen he
wrote a memoir Sur le Calcul integral aux differences infiniment
petites et aux differences finies. This provided the first intercourse
between Laplace and Lagrange. Lagrange was the senior by
thirteen years, and had recently founded in his native city Turin a
journal named Miscellanea Taurinensia, in which many of his
early works were printed and it was in the fourth volume of this
series that Laplace's paper appeared. About this time,
recognising that he had no vocation for the priesthood, he
resolved to become a professional mathematician. Some sources
state that he then broke with the church and became an atheist.
[citation needed]
 Laplace did not graduate in theology but left for Paris with
a letter of introduction from Le Canu to Jean le Rond
d'Alembert who at that time was supreme in scientific circles.[6][7]
According to his great-great-grandson,[4] d'Alembert received him
rather poorly, and to get rid of him gave him a thick mathematics
book, saying to come back when he had read it. When Laplace
came back a few days later, d'Alembert was even less friendly
and did not hide his opinion that it was impossible that Laplace
could have read and understood the book. But upon questioning
him, he realised that it was true, and from that time he took
Laplace under his care.
Another account is that Laplace solved overnight a problem that
d'Alembert set him for submission the following week, then solved
a harder problem the following night. D'Alembert was impressed
and recommended him for a teaching place in the École Militaire.[8]
With a secure income and undemanding teaching, Laplace now
threw himself into original research and for the next seventeen
years, 1771–1787, he produced much of his original work in
astronomy.

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