Abstract
Pierre-Simon Laplace was the most prominent exponent of 19th century probability theory. His major probabilistic work, the Théorie analytique des probabilités considerably influenced the development of mathematical probability and statistics right to the beginning of the 20th century.
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Bibliography
The Œuvres complètes de Laplace, which appeared between 1878 and 1912 (Paris, Gauthier-Villars) are not really complete.
The most comprehensive scientific biography is C.C. Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace, 1749–1827, A Life in Exact Science. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997.
S.M. Stigler’s book The History of Statistics, Belknap, Cambridge, MA, 1986 contains a detailed historical discussion of Laplace’s most relevant stochastic contributions.
Descriptions of mathematical details can be found in O.B. Sheynin, P.S. Laplace’s Work on Probability, Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 16 (1976), 137–187, Laplace’s Theory of Error, Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 17, (1977), 1–61, and concerning Bayesian Methods in A.I. Dale’s book A History of Inverse Probability. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1991.
The intellectual background of Laplace’s probabilistic work together with his treatment of moral questions is discussed in L. Daston’s book Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1988.
I. Schneider (1987). Laplace and Thereafter. In The Probabilistic Revolution. Vol. 1, ed. by L. Krüger et al, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 191–214, gives a history of the impact of Laplacian probability theory in the 19th century.
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Fischer, H. (2001). Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace. In: Heyde, C.C., Seneta, E., Crépel, P., Fienberg, S.E., Gani, J. (eds) Statisticians of the Centuries. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_19
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