In 1773 he began his major lifework—applying Newtonian gravitation to the entire solar system—by taking up a particularly troublesome problem: why appeared to be continuously shrinking while continually expanded. The mutual gravitational interactions within the solar system were so complex that mathematical solution seemed impossible; indeed, Newton had concluded that divine intervention was periodically required to preserve the system in equilibrium. Laplace announced the invariability of planetary mean motions (average angular velocity). This discovery in 1773, the first and most important step in establishing the stability of the solar system, was the most important advance in physical since Newton. It won him associate membership in the the same year.Applying quantitative methods to a comparison of living and nonliving systems, Laplace and the chemist in 1780, with the aid of an ice calorimeter that they had invented, showed respiration to be a form of combustion. Returning to his astronomical investigations with an examination of the entire subject of planetary —mutual gravitational effects—Laplace in 1786 proved that the eccentricities and inclinations of planetary orbits to each other will always remain small, constant, and self-correcting. The effects of perturbations were therefore conservative and periodic, not cumulative and disruptive.During 1784–85 Laplace worked on the subject of attraction between spheroids; in this the potential of later can be recognized for the first time. Laplace explored the problem of the attraction of any spheroid upon a particle situated outside or upon its surface. Through his discovery that the of a mass upon a particle, regardless of direction, can be obtained directly by differentiating a single function, Laplace laid the mathematical foundation for the scientific study of heat, magnetism, and electricity.Laplace removed the last apparent anomaly from the theoretical description of the solar system in 1787 with the announcement that lunar depends on the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit. Although the mean of the around the Earth depends mainly on the gravitational attraction between them, it is slightly diminished by the pull of the Sun on the Moon. This solar action depends, however, on changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit resulting from perturbations by the other planets. As a result, the Moon’s mean motion is accelerated as long as the Earth’s orbit tends to become more circular; but, when the reverse occurs, this motion is retarded. The inequality is therefore not truly cumulative, Laplace concluded, but is of a period running into millions of years. The last threat of instability thus disappeared from the theoretical description of the solar system., Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (/ ləˈplɑːs /; French: [pjɛʁ simɔ̃ laplas]; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French polymath, a scholar whose work has been instrumental in the fields of physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics, and philosophy., Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (born March 23, 1749, Beaumount-en-Auge, Normandy, France—died March 5, 1827, Paris) was a French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist who was best known for his investigations into the stability of the solar system..