Pierre Simon LaPlace Biography

             Pierre Simon LaPlace has been hailed as one of the greatest astronomers of all time. LaPlace is the creator of many great contributions to the field of astronomy. Up until he came into the picture, the field of astronomy was one of limited scope. Our solar system was regarded as a bunch of spheres neatly organized. He was the one who was able to make the leap from basic geometric ideas to ideas involving calculus. The involvement of calculus was the first step in creating a branch to more complex and in-depth queries of our universe.
             Born on March 23, 1749, LaPlace was born in Normandy, France; and was born into a middle-class farming based family. From his early years on, his education was fueled mostly by his desire, and was assisted by wealthy figures in his community. Later on in his scholarly career, LaPlace applied for a position at the University of Caen and began to study theology. He quickly dropped this subject and attempted to study astronomy. A turn of events led him to take an early interest in mathematics, and he was a quick study. By earning a higher teaching position at the Ecole Militare, LaPlace was able to obtain a more stable source of income, therefore allowing him to begin his own individual research which proved to be more invaluable than LaPlace could have ever imagined.
              The first, and arguably the most important discovery that LaPlace made has been dubbed the "LaPlace Equation". The applications of said equation are many, however the concept that he introduced was revolutionary. The equation reflected on the behavior of fluids under gravitational conditions, and also described the behavior of electric, electromagnetic, gravitational, and other various fields. The idea of the equation began when LaPlace started studying the mechanics of fluid dynamics. To put it in more simplistic terms, the LaPlace equation puts The rate at which the distance of a path on the outside of a sphere changes with an increasing or decreasing radius. LaPlace was also the first to theorize on more complex ideas relating to stellar interaction with intense fields of gravity. Pierre postulated that under a certain amount of gravity any stellar body would eventually succumb to gravitational collapse. This in turn led to his idea of how black holes were created and how they were able to exist. IE: If a supermassive body of mass, star or not were to have a strong enough gravitational field, the mass would collapse into a super-dense object of mass and would become a black hole, therefore exerting an even greater amount of gravitational attraction. Let it be noted that LaPlace only theorized the idea and that his belief that any body (not a star) was able to become a black hole has been proven incorrect.......or at least not observed to date.