Pierre-Simon Laplace (Beaumont-en-Auge, 1749 / Paris, 1827) was a French astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He shared the philosophical doctrine of scientific determinism and was a follower of Newtonian mechanics. He discovered and developed the Laplace transform and the Laplace equation, as a statistician he laid the foundations of the analytical theory of probability and as an astronomer he raised the Nebular Theory on the formation of the Solar System. Laplace thought that the gravitational collapse of a nebula could have given rise to the formation of the Sun and that the material orbiting it could condense to form a family of planets. This theory explained in a natural way that all the planets orbit around the Sun in the same direction (from west to east) and that their orbits are in the same plane.
