Pierre-Simon Laplace
A cider merchant's son who proved the solar system would not fall apart, put probability theory on a rigorous footing, and survived five French governments by knowing exactly when to change his mind
Pierre-Simon Laplace generalized de Moivre's normal approximation into the central limit theorem, formalized what is now called Bayes' theorem, and proved the long-term stability of the solar system in his five-volume Traite de Mecanique Celeste. This bio covers his rapid rise from provincial obscurity to the top of French science, his remarkable political survival across the monarchy, the Revolution, Napoleon's empire, and the Bourbon Restoration, and the famous (and famously undocumented) exchange with Napoleon over why his masterwork never mentions God.
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