Portrait of Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace

Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace

1749–1827

French mathematician

All the effects of nature are only mathematical results of a small number of immutable laws.

TOPICS: nature

Such is the advantage of a well-constructed language that its simplified notation often becomes the source of profound theories.

TOPICS: notation

It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit.

TOPICS: numbers, history, notation