Short answers, pulled from the story.
Pierre-Simon Laplace was born on the 23rd of March 1749 in Beaumont-en-Auge, a small village four miles west of Pont l'Évêque. His father owned estates near Maarquis while serving as a cider merchant and syndic of the town.
The first two volumes appeared in 1799 containing methods for calculating planetary motions and resolving tidal problems. The third and fourth volumes followed in 1802 and 1805 with applications of these methods and several astronomical tables. The fifth volume arrived much later in 1825 as mainly historical material but included appendices of his latest researches.
Napoleon appointed Pierre-Simon Laplace to the post of Minister of the Interior in November 1799 immediately after seizing power in the coup of 18 Brumaire. The appointment lasted only six weeks before Lucien Bonaparte received the post instead.
Pierre-Simon Laplace died in Paris on the 5th of March 1827 which was the same day Alessandro Volta died. His brain was removed by his physician François Magendie and kept for many years eventually displayed in a roving anatomical museum in Britain.
Laplace formulated Laplace's equation which appears ubiquitously in mathematical physics across fluid dynamics and electromagnetism. He introduced spherical harmonics or Laplace coefficients into analysis extending results previously found by Adrien-Marie Legendre in 1783.