Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) was the French mathematician so dazzlingly good at applying maths to the heavens that people called him the "Newton of France." He wanted to write down the entire clockwork of the Solar System — and very nearly did.
Whenever something settles into a smooth, sourceless equilibrium — a stretched drum skin at rest,
a steady temperature, a gravitational field in empty space — it obeys
The most famous Laplace story: presenting his grand work on the Solar System to Napoleon, he was asked why God never appeared anywhere in the pages. He is said to have replied that he "had no need of that hypothesis" — not because he was picking a fight, but because his equations already explained the motions on their own. He also imagined a super-intellect (later nicknamed "Laplace's demon") that, knowing every particle's position and speed, could compute the entire past and future. A supremely confident man with the maths to almost back it up.