Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace was a French polymath, a scholar whose work has been instrumental in the fields of physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics, and philosophy. He summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five-volume Mécanique céleste (1799–1825). This work translated the geometric study of classical mechanics to one based on calculus, opening up a broader range of problems. Laplace also popularized and further confirmed Sir Isaac Newton's work. In statistics, the Bayesian interpretation of probability was developed mainly by Laplace. March 23, 1749 – March 4, 1827; died at 77. Alive at the same time as Abraham Lincoln, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig van Beethoven, Immanuel Kant, and Napoleon. Wiki link