Pierre-Simon Laplace

Grand Officer of the Légion d'Honneur, Count of the French Empire

Pierre-Simon Laplace was born on March 23, 1749 in the family home  in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy (now Calvados), into a very modest environment.

Thanks to wealthy neighbors, he studied at the University of Caen. His talent was recognized by Jean le Rond D'Alembert, who offered him a professorship in mathematics at the École Militaire.

Before the French Revolution, Laplace's research focused mainly on astronomy; his numerous publications earned him the chair of mechanics at the Académie royale des sciences in 1785.

In 1795, he was awarded the chair of mathematics at the new Institut des Sciences et des Arts, of which he became president in 1812.

In 1799, he was appointed Minister of the Interior by the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, but it took the latter only six weeks to judge him incompetent for the job and replace him with his brother Lucien Bonaparte.

Between 1799 and 1805, Laplace published the first four volumes of his Mécanique céleste, followed by his Théorie analytique des probabilités in 1812 and his Essai philosophique sur les probabilités in 1814.

Compared to Isaac Newton, Laplace's modesty never suffered, and he accepted all honors with the assurance that they were his due: appointment to the Conservative Senate, Count of the Empire in 1806, election to the Académie française in 1816 under the Restoration, the title of Marquis in 1817, and founding president of the Société de géographie in 1821.

Two years after publishing the fifth and final volume of La Mécanique céleste, Pierre-Simon Laplace died on March 5, 1827 in Paris, in the building he rented at 108 rue du Bac. Originally buried in the 25th division of the Père Lachaise cemetery, his body was later transferred to an isolated mausoleum  in the fields of Saint-Julien-de-Mailloc, Calvados.

Laplace's name can be found in all works dealing with astronomy, mathematics and physics, but also in the sky, since an asteroid was named in his honor.

A bronze statue honors the memory of the scientist in front of his birthplace in Beaumont-en-Auge.

Philately: In 1955, the French Postal Service released a 30.00 Franc stamp bearing the image of Pierre-Simon Laplace  .