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Siméon Denis Poisson
said
In many different fields, empirical phenomena appear to obey a certain general law, which can be called the Law of Large Numbers.
— Statement of Poisson's law also known as the Law of Large Numbers (1837), as quoted by
Siméon Denis Poisson
French mathematician, mechanician and physicist (1781–1840)
- Fame55.3
- Momentum0.7
- Academics rank#247
Summary
Updated 2026-06-09
A French mathematician whose name survives in the Poisson distribution, the Poisson equation, and half a dozen other foundational tools — though he's equally remembered for trying to kill wave theory and accidentally predicting the bright spot that proved it correct.
Biography
About
Siméon Denis Poisson was born on 21 June 1781 and spent his career ranging across statistics, complex analysis, partial differential equations, analytical mechanics, electricity, magnetism, thermodynamics, elasticity, and fluid mechanics. In attempting to disprove Augustin-Jean Fresnel's wave theory of light, he predicted what's now called the Arago spot — a bright point that should appear in the shadow of a disk — expecting the result to be absurd; when the spot was observed, it became one of wave theory's strongest confirmations. His physical interpretations were often overturned by later wo…
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Sourced, dated quotes from Siméon Denis Poisson
Siméon Denis Poisson
saidundated
That which can affect our senses in any manner whatever, is termed matter.
— Introductory sentence of
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The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.
Fame
Stable55.3
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum0.7
Historical24.3
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
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- WikipediaHigh confidencewikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- WikidataHigh confidencewikidata · wikidata.org
- Pantheon 2.0High confidencedatabase · pantheon.world
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