In short, Pierre Simon Laplace is a scientist known in the scientific world as a mathematician, physicist and astronomer of the 19th century. He made a decisive contribution to the theory of planetary motion. But best of all, Laplace is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all time and is called the "French Newton". In his writings, he applied Isaac Newton's theory of gravity to the entire solar system. His work on the theory of probability and statistics is considered groundbreaking and influenced a whole new generation of mathematicians.
Childhood and education
Very little is known about the early childhood of the outstanding French scientist. A brief biography of Pierre Laplace from birth to college fits into a few lines and does not allow us to understand how certain views of the future genius were formed in adolescence. It remains to be assumed that there were some unknown patrons, people who possessed progressive views for their time, which, perhaps,helped him familiarize himself with the latest literature.
So, Laplace was born on March 23, 1749 in Biemont-en-Og, Norway. He was the fourth of five children of Catholic parents and was named after his father. The family was middle-class: his father was a farmer, and his mother, Marie-Anne Sohon, came from a fairly we althy family. Pierre's father very much wanted his son to become an ordained priest, since in elementary school he expounded his special divine ideas in an essay on theology. But the father's dream was not destined to come true. While studying in high school of the monastic order of the Benedictines, the guy developed atheistic views on the formation of the world.
University and military academy
The biography of Pierre Simon Laplace has preserved information for posterity about his universities, works, discoveries and hypotheses. In 1765, when he was only 16 years old, he was sent to the University of Caen. After a year of rhetoric at the College of Art, he began to study philosophy, but soon became interested in mathematics. She captivated him so deeply that Pierre Laplace began to publish his works in mathematical publications.
In 1769 he traveled to Paris with a letter of introduction from Le Canu to meet one of the most influential mathematicians of the time, Jean-le-Rond d'Alembert. The mathematician became convinced of Laplace's abilities by reading his work on inertia. Thanks to d'Alembert, Pierre Laplace received a position as professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, as well as an annual salary and housing at the school. Five years laterLaplace has already written 13 scientific papers on integral calculus, mechanics and physical astronomy, which have gained fame in the scientific community and recognition throughout France.
First achievements in science
Laplace became adjutant of the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1773. At this time, he, together with d'Alembert, was engaged in research on heat, and their work becomes the basis of a future science, the name of which is thermochemistry.
In 1778, Pierre Laplace's biography changes in his personal life. He marries Charlotte de Courti, who, a year after her marriage, gave her husband a son and then a daughter.
Since 1785, Laplace is an active member of the Academy of Sciences. His responsibilities include the reorganization of the education system in France. In 1790 he was appointed chairman of the Chamber of Weights and Measures. At this time, their joint work with d'Alembert continues, but in the field of standardization. They solve the problem of measures, motley and confused in France. Thanks to a specially appointed commission, which includes Pierre Laplace, the French Academy of Sciences is standardizing the measures of weight and length, bringing it to the decimal system. The commission adopted the developed standard, which stated that it was not derived and did not belong to any of the peoples. The kilogram and meter were adopted as standards.
The versatility of Laplace's talent
In 1795, Pierre became a member of the department of mathematics of the new institute of sciences and arts, of which he would be appointed president in1812. In 1806, Laplace was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Laplace's analytical mind could not help but get carried away by statistics - this game of blind chance. Laplace took up calculations and began to look for ways to subordinate random events, trying to bring them into the framework of laws, as happens in the movement of celestial bodies. He coped with the task set before him. His 1812 work "The Analytic Theory of Probability" contributed to a significant study of the subjects of probability and statistics.
In 1816 he was elected to the French Academy. In 1821 he became the first president of the Geographical Society. In addition, he becomes a member of all major scientific academies in Europe.
Through his intense scientific activity, Pierre Laplace had a great influence on the scientists of his time, especially Adolphe Quetelet and Simeon Denis Poisson. He has been compared to the French Newton for his natural and extraordinary aptitude for mathematics. Several mathematical equations have been named after him: the Laplace equation, the Laplace transforms, and the Laplace differential equations. He derives the formula used in physics to determine capillary pressure.
Astronomy research
Laplace is one of the first scientists to show great interest in the long-term stability of the solar system. The complexity of gravitational interactions between the Sun and the known planets at the time did not seem to allow for a simpleanalytical solution. Newton already sensed this problem by noticing disturbances in the motion of some planets; he concluded that divine intervention was necessary to avoid dislocation of the solar system.
The works that Laplace writes throughout his life are difficult to systematize. Pierre Laplace repeatedly returned to some of the hypotheses put forward in his works, modifying them on the basis of new data obtained in experiments. These were hypotheses about black holes as astronomical objects, the existence of which was suggested by Laplace in the version of classical physics and possible sources of the Universe.
Work on a five-volume book
For many years, Laplace was engaged in research in the field of astronomy and published his five-volume treatise Traité de mécanique céleste ("Celestial Mechanics").
His work on celestial mechanics is considered revolutionary. He established that the small perturbations observed in the orbital motion of the planets will always remain small, constant and self-correcting. He was the earliest astronomer to propose the idea that the solar system originated from the contraction and cooling of a large, rotating, and therefore oblate, nebula of hot gas. Laplace published his famous work on probability in 1812. He gave his own definition of probability and applied it to justify fundamental mathematical manipulations.
Publication of the five volumes
The first two volumes, published in 1799, containmethods for calculating planetary motions, determining their forms and solving tidal problems. The third and fourth were published in 1802 and 1805. They contain applications of these methods and various astronomical tables. The fifth volume, published in 1825, is mostly historical, but it gives in an appendix the results of Laplace's latest research.
In his many years of work, Pierre Simon Laplace reveals the nebula hypothesis, according to which the solar system is formed after the condensation of this nebula.
Last years of life
At the age of 72, in 1822, Laplace was appointed an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1825, his he alth deteriorated, he was forced to stay at home all the time, and met with his students in his office. By the way, having a fairly large income, the family lived modestly. This was most likely due to the fact that Laplace was not sure about the future, given the situation in the country in which he had to live during the reign of Napoleon and the French Revolution.
Engaged in science all his life, he was no stranger to art. The walls of the office were decorated with copies of Raphael's works. He knew many poems by Racine, whose portrait was on the wall of his office along with portraits of Descartes, Galileo and Euler. He liked Italian music.
Death
Pierre Simon Laplace died on March 5, 1827 at the age of 77 in Paris. The burial place of an outstanding scientist was a cemetery in Paris - Pere Lachaise. In 1888, at the request of his son Laplace, the remains of his father were reburied in the familythe estate, along with the remains of his mother and sister.
The burial site of Laplace, where the tomb is in the form of a Greek temple with Doric columns, is located on a hill overlooking the village of Saint-Julien-de-Mayoc, in Calvados.
Pierre Simon Laplace can be said to be one of 72 Frenchmen whose names were engraved on the Eiffel Tower. As a tribute to his talent, a street in Paris was named after him.
