what are the contributions of Pierre Simon Laplace in mathematics?

Answer 1

Pierre Simon Laplace was the son of a small cottager or perhaps a farm-labourer, and owed his education to the interest excited in some wealthy neighbours by his abilities and engaging presence. It would seem from a pupil he became an usher in the school at Beaumont; but, having procured a letter of introduction to Jean le Rond d'Alembert, he went to Paris to push his fortune. A paper on the principles of mechanics excited D'Alembert's interest, and on his recommendation a place in the military school was offered to Laplace.

Secure of a competency, Laplace now threw himself into original research, and in the next seventeen years, 1771-1787, he produced much of his original work in astronomy. This commenced with a memoir, read before the French Academy in 1773, in which he showed that the planetary motions were stable, and carried the proof as far as the cubes of the eccentricities and inclinations. This was followed by several papers on points in the integral calculus, finite differences, differential equations, and astronomy.

Laplace had a wide knowledge of all sciences and dominated all discussions in the Académie. Quite uniquely for a mathematical prodigy of his skill, Laplace viewed mathematics as nothing in itself but a tool to be called upon in the investigation of a scientific or practical inquiry.

Laplace spent much of his life working on mathematical astronomy that culminated in his masterpiece on the proof of the dynamic stability of the solar system with the assumption that it consists of a collection of rigid bodies moving in a vacuum. He independently formulated the nebular hypothesis and was one of the first scientists to postulate the existence of black holes and the notion of gravitational collapse.

He is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all time (sometimes referred to as a French Newton) with a natural phenomenal mathematical faculty possessed by none of his contemporaries. It does appear that Laplace was not modest about his abilities and achievements, and he probably failed to recognise the effect of his attitude on his colleagues. Anders Johan Lexell visited the Académie des Sciences in Paris in 1780-81 and reported that Laplace let it be known widely that he considered himself the best mathematician in France. The effect on his colleagues would have been only mildly eased by the fact that Laplace was very likely right.

Answer 2

Pierre Simon Laplace Biography

Answer 3

Search the internet for "Laplace transform"