Laplace, Pierre-Simon, marquis de

born March 23, 1749, Beaumount-en-Auge, France

died March 5, 1827, Paris

French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist.

He is best known for his investigations into the stability of the solar system and the theory of magnetic, electrical, and heat wave propagation. In his major lifework he applied Newtonian gravitational theory to the solar system to explain deviations of the planets from the orbits predicted by the theory (1773). Newton believed that only divine intervention could explain the solar system's equilibrium, but Laplace established a mathematical basis for it, the most important advance in physical astronomy since Newton. He continued to work on elucidating planetary perturbations through the 1780s. A work published in 1796 included his nebular hypothesis, which attributed the origin of the solar system to the cooling and contracting of a gaseous nebula, a theory that strongly influenced future thought on planetary origins. See also Laplace transform; Laplace's equation.

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▪ French scientist and mathematician

born March 23, 1749, Beaumount-en-Auge, Normandy, France

died March 5, 1827, Paris

 French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist who is best known for his investigations into the stability of the solar system.

      Laplace successfully accounted for all the observed deviations of the planets (planet) from their theoretical orbits by applying Sir Isaac Newton (Newton, Sir Isaac)'s theory of gravitation to the solar system, and he developed a conceptual view of evolutionary change in the structure of the solar system. He also demonstrated the usefulness of probability (probability theory) for interpreting scientific data.

      Laplace was the son of a peasant farmer. Little is known of his early life except that he quickly showed his mathematical ability at the military academy at Beaumont. In 1766 Laplace entered the University of Caen, but he left for Paris the next year, apparently without taking a degree. He arrived with a letter of recommendation to the mathematician Jean d'Alembert (Alembert, Jean Le Rond d'), who helped him secure a professorship at the École Militaire, where he taught from 1769 to 1776.

      In 1773 he began his major lifework—applying Newtonian gravitation to the entire solar system—by taking up a particularly troublesome problem: why Jupiter's (Jupiter) orbit appeared to be continuously shrinking while Saturn's (Saturn) continually expanded. The mutual gravitational interactions within the solar system were so complex that mathematical solution seemed impossible; indeed, Newton had concluded that divine intervention was periodically required to preserve the system in equilibrium. Laplace announced the invariability of planetary mean motions (average angular velocity). This discovery in 1773, the first and most important step in establishing the stability of the solar system, was the most important advance in physical astronomy since Newton. It won him associate membership in the French Academy of Sciences (Sciences, Academy of) the same year.

      Applying quantitative methods to a comparison of living and nonliving systems, Laplace and the chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent) in 1780, with the aid of an ice calorimeter that they had invented, showed respiration to be a form of combustion. Returning to his astronomical investigations with an examination of the entire subject of planetary perturbations (perturbation)—mutual gravitational effects—Laplace in 1786 proved that the eccentricities and inclinations of planetary orbits to each other will always remain small, constant, and self-correcting. The effects of perturbations were therefore conservative and periodic, not cumulative and disruptive.

      During 1784–85 Laplace worked on the subject of attraction between spheroids; in this work the potential function of later physics can be recognized for the first time. Laplace explored the problem of the attraction of any spheroid upon a particle situated outside or upon its surface. Through his discovery that the attractive force (gravitation) of a mass upon a particle, regardless of direction, can be obtained directly by differentiating a single function, Laplace laid the mathematical foundation for the scientific study of heat, magnetism, and electricity.

      Laplace removed the last apparent anomaly from the theoretical description of the solar system in 1787 with the announcement that lunar acceleration depends on the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. Although the mean motion of the Moon around the Earth depends mainly on the gravitational attraction between them, it is slightly diminished by the pull of the Sun on the Moon. This solar action depends, however, on changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit resulting from perturbations by the other planets. As a result, the Moon's mean motion is accelerated as long as the Earth's orbit tends to become more circular; but, when the reverse occurs, this motion is retarded. The inequality is therefore not truly cumulative, Laplace concluded, but is of a period running into millions of years. The last threat of instability thus disappeared from the theoretical description of the solar system.

      In 1796 Laplace published Exposition du système du monde (The System of the World), a semipopular treatment of his work in celestial mechanics and a model of French prose. The book included his “nebular hypothesis”—attributing the origin of the solar system to cooling and contracting of a gaseous nebula—which strongly influenced future thought on planetary origin. His Traité de mécanique céleste (Celestial Mechanics), appearing in five volumes between 1798 and 1827, summarized the results obtained by his mathematical development and application of the law of gravitation. He offered a complete mechanical interpretation of the solar system by devising methods for calculating the motions of the planets and their satellites and their perturbations, including the resolution of tidal problems. The book made him a celebrity.

      In 1814 Laplace published a popular work for the general reader, Essai philosophique sur les probabilités (A Philosophical Essay on Probability). This work was the introduction to the second edition of his comprehensive and important Théorie analytique des probabilités (Analytic Theory of Probability), first published in 1812, in which he described many of the tools he invented for mathematically predicting the probabilities (probability theory) that particular events will occur in nature. He applied his theory not only to the ordinary problems of chance but also to the inquiry into the causes of phenomena, vital statistics, and future events, while emphasizing its importance for physics and astronomy. The book is notable also for including a special case of what became known as the central limit theorem (probability theory). Laplace proved that the distibution of errors in large data samples from astronomical observations can be approximated by a Gaussian or normal distribution.

      Probably because he did not hold strong political views and was not a member of the aristocracy, he escaped imprisonment and execution during the French Revolution. Laplace was president of the Board of Longitude, aided in the organization of the metric system, helped found the scientific Society of Arcueil, and was created a marquis. He served for six weeks as minister of the interior under Napoleon, who famously reminisced that Laplace “carried the spirit of the infinitesimal into administration.”

Gerald James Whitrow

Additional Reading

Charles Coulston Gillispie, Robert Fox, and Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1749–1827: A Life in Exact Science (1997), contains Gillispie's scientific biography, Grattan-Guinness's history of the Laplace transform, and Fox's history of Laplace's role in the development of French mathematical physics.Laplace's collected works were published as Œuvres complètes de Laplace, 14 vol. (1878–1912). Translations of Laplace's works include Mécanique céleste, trans. by Nathaniel Bowditch, 4 vol. (1829–39, reprinted with original French as Celestial Mechanics, 5 vol., 1966–69), with a wealth of commentary; The System of the World, 2 vol. (1830), a classic semipopular treatment of his work on celestial mechanics; and A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, trans. by Frederick Wilson Truscott and Frederick Lincoln Emory (1902, reprinted 1995; trans. from the French 6th ed., 1840), also a classic.

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