to a large number of papers on astronomy and mathematics, three important books on pure mathematics,[1] and at the time of his death had not quite finished a second edition of the Mécanique Analytique, the second volume appearing posthumously.
238. Pierre Simon Laplace, the son of a small farmer, was born at Beaumont in Normandy in 1749, being thus 13 years younger than his great rival Lagrange. Thanks to the help of well-to-do neighbours, he was first a pupil and afterwards a teacher at the Military School of his native town. When he was 18 he went to Paris with a letter of introduction to D'Alembert, and, when no notice was taken of it, wrote him a letter on the principles of mechanics which impressed D'Alembert so much that he at once took interest in the young mathematician and procured him an appointment at the Military School at Paris. From this time onwards Laplace lived continuously at Paris, holding various official positions. His first paper (on pure mathematics) was published in the Transactions of the Turin Academy for the years 1766-69, and from this time to the end of his life he produced an uninterrupted series of papers and books on astronomy and allied departments of mathematics.
Laplace's work on astronomy was to a great extent incorporated in his Mécanique Céleste, the five volumes of which appeared at intervals between 1799 and 1825. In this great treatise he aimed at summing up all that had been done in developing gravitational astronomy since the time of Newton. The only other astronomical book which he published was the Exposition du Système du Monde (1796), one of the most perfect and charmingly written popular treatises on astronomy ever published, in which the great mathematician never uses either an algebraical formula or a geometrical diagram. He published also in 1812 an elaborate treatise on the theory of probability or chance,[2] on which nearly all later developments of the subject have been based, and in 1819 a more popular Essai Philosophique on the same subject.
