About this book
Scientists and students around the world are familiar with concepts that bear his name: the Laplacian, the Laplace-Gauss law, the Laplace transform, Laplace matrices, and many more. Yet Pierre-Simon Laplace remains poorly understood and is far from being recognized at his true value. Often criticized for having been in the service of successive regimes, from the Ancien Régime to the Restoration, his personality is in reality more complex and deeper. As for his work, it is of impressive variety: probabilities, differential calculus, algebra, celestial mechanics, physics, but also philosophy of science and social mathematics. His primary concern was to understand the world and its physical laws. An active member of the Academy of Sciences, served by his excellent pen, he is one of the few mathematicians to have been admitted to the Académie française. In this work, you will discover the multiple facets of the man who is sometimes nicknamed "the French Newton
Contents
File 1: An essential scholar
Nurturing quickly high aspirations, Laplace imposed on himself an impressive work rhythm in connection with many fields. His life reveals a much more complex and deeper man than the image one often has of him.
Topics covered
The man of all eras A giant passed down to posterity From the Arsenal circle to the Société d'Arcueil The protector of youth God, a non-necessary hypothesis? The multiple functions of Laplace The beginnings of linear algebra
File 2: Political commitment
Laplace lived in turn under the Ancien Régime, the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration and became involved in politics with the perspective of a form of scientific interest superior to the hazards of successive governments. Topics covered
The unloved one of historians A role in Napoleon's downfall A pedagogical interest in knowledge transmission A scholar who insists on popularizing The ephemeral republican calendar
File 3: Celestial mechanics
Through sustained work, Laplace discovered little-known phenomena: the so-called Coriolis forces, tidal dynamics, gravitational resonances... The Norman jack-of-all-trades had even predicted the existence of black holes!
Topics covered
The empire of resonances An innovative look at differential equations From Laplace's equation to the Laplacian The brilliant intuition of the existence of black holes The ebb and flow of the sea Mary Somerville and Celestial Mechanics
File 4: Probabilities in practice
Although convinced of the deterministic functioning of the Universe, Laplace notably contributed to the development of probability calculus, bringing it into the field of mathematics.
Topics covered
The philosopher of chance Probabilities and their metaphysics D'Alembert and "heads or tails". A historical quarrel Census and normal law The first law of large numbers Will the Sun rise tomorrow? Laplace's three laws of errors Mathematics in the courtroom From the probability of testimonies to Pascal's wager
File 5: Towards theoretical physics
Equipped with the advances in differential calculus, some being Laplace's own work, the scholar deployed all his demonstrative power to rediscover already known laws, but also to establish new ones.
Topics covered
Laplace and Lavoisier, complex relationships From thermodynamics to the speed of sound The study of capillarity Optics in the service of astronomy
Contents
File 1: An essential scholar
Nurturing quickly high aspirations, Laplace imposed on himself an impressive work rhythm in connection with many fields. His life reveals a much more complex and deeper man than the image one often has of him.
Topics covered
The man of all eras A giant passed down to posterity From the Arsenal circle to the Société d'Arcueil The protector of youth God, a non-necessary hypothesis? The multiple functions of Laplace The beginnings of linear algebra
File 2: Political commitment
Laplace lived in turn under the Ancien Régime, the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration and became involved in politics with the perspective of a form of scientific interest superior to the hazards of successive governments. Topics covered
The unloved one of historians A role in Napoleon's downfall A pedagogical interest in knowledge transmission A scholar who insists on popularizing The ephemeral republican calendar
File 3: Celestial mechanics
Through sustained work, Laplace discovered little-known phenomena: the so-called Coriolis forces, tidal dynamics, gravitational resonances... The Norman jack-of-all-trades had even predicted the existence of black holes!
Topics covered
The empire of resonances An innovative look at differential equations From Laplace's equation to the Laplacian The brilliant intuition of the existence of black holes The ebb and flow of the sea Mary Somerville and Celestial Mechanics
File 4: Probabilities in practice
Although convinced of the deterministic functioning of the Universe, Laplace notably contributed to the development of probability calculus, bringing it into the field of mathematics.
Topics covered
The philosopher of chance Probabilities and their metaphysics D'Alembert and "heads or tails". A historical quarrel Census and normal law The first law of large numbers Will the Sun rise tomorrow? Laplace's three laws of errors Mathematics in the courtroom From the probability of testimonies to Pascal's wager
File 5: Towards theoretical physics
Equipped with the advances in differential calculus, some being Laplace's own work, the scholar deployed all his demonstrative power to rediscover already known laws, but also to establish new ones.
Topics covered
Laplace and Lavoisier, complex relationships From thermodynamics to the speed of sound The study of capillarity Optics in the service of astronomy