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A renowned French mathematician and physical astronomer; born at Beaumont-en-Auge, March 28, 1749; died at Paris, March 5, 1827. In his great work "Mechanism of the Heavens" (5 vols., 1799-1825), he attacks nearly every problem arising out of the movements of the heavenly bodies, and in great part offers the solution. His "Exposition of the System of the Universe" (2 vols., 1796), may be regarded as a less abstruse presentation of the arguments advanced in the "Mechanism"; in the former he hits on the same hypothesis to account for the origin of the planets which had been a little before offered by Kant. His famous researches into the laws of probability are summed up in the two works, "Analytic Theory of Probabilities" (1812), and "Philosophical Essay on Probabilities" (1814).