Science · Politics · Literature · 1749–1827
Born: 23 March 1749 · Died: 5 March 1827 · Age: 77
French mathematician and astronomer who wrote Celestial Mechanics, advanced probability theory and proposed the nebular hypothesis
Did you know?He was one of the first scientists to suggest the existence of black holes, describing stars with gravity so strong light cannot escape.
Pierre-Simon Laplace was often called the French Newton. The son of a farmer in Normandy, he impressed the mathematician d'Alembert as a young man. His five-volume Celestial Mechanics showed that the solar system is stable over long periods. He suggested that the solar system formed from a spinning cloud of gas. He imagined stars so massive that light could not escape them, an early idea of black holes. He also built much of modern probability theory. He served briefly as Napoleon's interior minister.
Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (French:; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French polymath, a scholar whose work has been instrumental in the fields of physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics, and philosophy.
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Profile
French mathematician, 1749–1827
Pierre-Simon Laplace was born in Beaumont-en-Auge on 23 March 1749.
He wrote Celestial Mechanics.
He developed probability theory.
He was briefly interior minister under Napoleon.
Career highlights
Did you know?He told Napoleon he had "no need of that hypothesis".
Questions people ask
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