On March 15, Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace, one of the greatest mathematicians and physical astronomers of all time, died at Arcueil. Laplace was born in 1749, in Normandy. Although a poor farmer's son, he soon won the position of a teacher at the Beaumont Military School of Mathematics, and later at the Ecole Militaire of Paris. One of the early notable labors of Laplace was his investigation of planetary perturbations, and his demonstration that planetary mean motions are invariable--the first important step in the establishment of the stability of the solar system and one of the most brilliant achievements in celestial mechanics. In his "Exposition du Systeme du Monde" was formulated the theory called the "nebular hypothesis," the glory of which he must share with Kant. "He would have completed the science of the skies," says Fourier, "had the science been capable of completion." As a physicist he made discoveries that were in themselves sufficient to perpetuate his name, in specific heat, capillary action and sound. In mathematics he furnished the modern scientist with the famous Laplace co-efficients and the potential function, thereby laying the foundation of the mathematical sciences of heat and electricity. Not satisfied with scientific distinction, Laplace aspired to political honors and left a public record which is not altogether to his credit. Of his labors as Minister of the Interior, Napoleon remarked: "He brought into the administration the spirit of the infinitesimals." Although he owed his political success, small as it was, to Napoleon--the man whom he had once heralded as the "pacificator of Europe"--he voted for his dethronement. [Sidenote: Death of Beethoven] Shortly after the death of Laplace, Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26. The last years of his life were so clouded by his deafness and by the distressing vagaries of his nephew that he was often on the verge of suicide. In December, 1826, he caught a violent cold, which brought on his ultimate death from pneumonia and dropsy. Beethoven, though he adhered to the sonata form of the classic school, introduced into his compositions such daringly original methods that he must be regarded as the first of the great romantic composers. Some of his latest compositions notably, were so very unconventional that they found no appreciation, even among musicians, until years after his death. Technically, his art of orchestration reached such a perfection of general unity and elaboration of detail that he must stand as the greatest instrumental composer of the nineteenth century. The profound subjective note that pervades his best compositions lifts his music above that of his greatest predecessors: Bach, Haydn and Mozart. [Sidenote: Beethoven's career] [Sidenote: Notable compositions] [Sidenote: "Fidelio"] [Sidenote: Beethoven's declining years]