Pierre-Simon Laplace

French polymath (1749–1827)

Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (French: [pjɛʁ simɔ̃ laplas]; 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. 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.

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