often referred to as France’s Newton, best known for his work on planetary motion, enshrined in his five‐volume Mécanique céleste, and for his fundamental contributions to the theory of probability. It was Laplace who extended Newton’s gravitational theory to the study of the whole solar system. He developed the strongly deterministic view that, once the starting conditions of a closed dynamical system such as the universe are known, its future development is then totally determined.