Le Maître Mathématicien

Abstract

The discovery of Uranus had destroyed forever the ancien régime of the heavens, the complacent view from time immemorial that Saturn marked the ne plus ultra of the solar system. In terrestrial affairs, too, change was in the air. In France, the old order, developed by imperceptible degrees over millenia and persisting ever since feudal times, was in disarray. The chaos and upheaval of the French Revolution and the beheading of France’s Bourbon King Louis XVI sent shock waves through the rest of Europe. During the ensuing terror, no man of ability or ambition was safe. Jean Sylvain Bailly, distinguished historian of astronomy, was guillotined. So was Jean Baptiste de Saron, the first man to calculate an orbit for Uranus—he spent the night before his execution calmly calculating a refined orbit for Halley’s Comet. Lagrange and Laplace were spared, possibly because they were requisitioned to calculate trajectories for the artillery and to help direct the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. Laplace, nevertheless, was viewed with suspicion; he was removed from the Commission on Weights and Measures because he was thought to be lacking “republican virtues and the hatred of kings.”