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 "French Newton." In his writings, he applied the theory of gravity of Isaac Newton to the entire solar system. His work on the theory of probability and statistics is considered innovative and has influenced a whole new generation of mathematicians.
Childhood and education
Very little is known about the early childhood of the outstanding French scientist. A short biography of Pierre Laplace from birth to college fits into several lines and does not allow us to understand how certain views of the future genius were formed in the adolescent years. It remains to be assumed that there were some unknown patrons, people who possessed advanced views for their time, who, perhaps, helped him get acquainted with the latest literature.
So, Laplace was born on March 23, 1749 in the city of Biemon-en-Og, Norway. He was the fourth of five children of Catholic parents, and received the name in honor of his father. The family was middle-income: his father was a farmer, and his mother, Marie-Ann Sohon, came from a rather wealthy family. Pierre’s father really wanted his son to become an ordained priest, since in elementary school he set forth his special divine ideas in an essay on theology. But the father’s dream was not destined to be fulfilled. While studying in high school, the monastic order of the Benedictines, the guy developed atheistic views on world formation.
University and Military Academy
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 Cana. After a year of rhetoric at the College of Art, he began to study philosophy, but soon he became interested in mathematics. She carried him so deeply that Pierre Laplace began to publish his works in mathematical publications.
In 1769, he went to Paris with a letter of recommendation from Le Canu to meet with one of the most influential mathematicians of the time, Jean-le-Rond Dalambert. The mathematician became convinced of the abilities of Laplace, having familiarized himself with his work on inertia. Thanks to the Dalambér, Pierre Laplace received the position of professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, as well as an annual salary and housing at the school. Five years later, Laplace 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 advances in science
Laplace became an adjutant to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1773. At this time, he, together with D'Alembert, was engaged in heat research, and their work became the basis of a future science, the name of which is thermochemistry.
In 1778, a change in personal life took place in the biography of Pierre Laplace. He marries Charlotte de Curti, who, a year after 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 collaboration continues with D'Alembert, but also in the field of standardization. They solve the problem of measures, motley and confusing in France. Thanks to a specially appointed commission, which includes Pierre Laplace, the French Academy of Sciences is standardizing measures of weight and length, leading it to the decimal system. The Commission adopted the developed standard, which stated that it is not derivative and does not belong to any of the peoples. The standards adopted kilogram and meter.
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, whose president he will be appointed in 1812. In 1806, Laplace was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Laplace’s analytical mind could not help being carried away by statistics - this game of blind chance. Laplace engaged in calculations and began to look for ways to subordinate random events, trying to introduce them into the framework of laws, as happens in the movement of celestial bodies. He coped with his task. His 1812 work, Analytical 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.
Thanks to his intensive scientific work, Pierre Laplace has a great influence on the scientists of his time, especially Adolf Kettle and Simeon Denis Poisson. He is compared to the French Newton for his natural and extraordinary ability in mathematics. Several mathematical equations were named after him: the Laplace equation, the Laplace transforms and the Laplace differential equations. He derives a formula that is used in physics to determine capillary pressure.
Astronomy Research
Laplace is one of the first scientists who show great interest in the issue of long-term stability of the solar system. The complexity of gravitational interactions between the Sun and known planets at that time did not seem to allow a simple analytical solution. Newton already felt this problem, noticing disturbances in the movement of some planets; he concluded that divine intervention is necessary in order to avoid the dislocation of the solar system.
The works that Laplace writes throughout his life are difficult to systematize. Pierre Laplace returned to several hypotheses put forward in his work more than once, refining 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.
Five-volume work
For many years, Laplace was engaged in research in 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 during 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 arose due to the compression and cooling of a large rotating and, therefore, flattened nebula of hot gas. Laplace published his famous work on probability in 1812. He gave his own definition of probability and applied it to substantiate fundamental mathematical manipulations.
Five-volume publication
The first two volumes, published in 1799, contain methods 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 the appendix the results of recent Laplace research.
In his many years of work, Pierre Simon Laplace reveals the hypothesis of a nebula, 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 health was shaken, he was forced to stay at home constantly, and he met with students in his office. By the way, having a fairly large income, the family lived modestly. This is most likely due to the fact that Laplace was not sure about tomorrow, given the situation in the country in which he had to live during the reign of Napoleon and the French Revolution.
Studying science all his life, he was not a stranger to art. Cabinet walls were adorned 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 the outstanding scientist was the cemetery in Paris - Pere-Lachaise. In 1888, at the request of his son Laplace, the remains of his father were reburied in the family estate along with the remains of his mother and sister.
The burial place of Laplace, where there is a tomb 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.
About Pierre Simon Laplace, we can say that he was one of the 72 French whose names were engraved on the Eiffel Tower. As a tribute to his talent, one of the streets in Paris was named after him.