Pierre Simon Laplace

Pierre Simon Laplace (Beaumont-en-Auge, 1749 - París, 1827) was a French astronomer and mathematician. His works are described in his five volume "Celestial Mechanics" (1799-1825). French scientists, especially Laplace developed and systematized Isaac Newton's ideas into modern Classical mechanics in the late 18th century.

Laplace proved the stability of the solar system. In analysis Laplace introduced the potential function and Laplace coefficients. He also put the theory of mathematical probability on a sound footing. [1]

Laplace is considered one of the greatest scientists of all time.

Quotations

• It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.
• The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which ofttimes they are unable to account.
• All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.
• Man follows only phantoms.
• What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense.

See also

• Laplace's Demon
• Laplace's equation

External links

• Pierre-Simon Laplace
• Differential Equations