Central Limit Theorem

Abraham de Moivre first postulated a version in 1733, using the normal distribution to approximate coin-toss outcomes—a finding nearly forgotten until French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace rescued it in his 1812 Théorie analytique des probabilités. Laplace proved the standard version in 1810, developing the characteristic function for large-sample theory. Siméon-Denis Poisson began improvements in 1824; Russian mathematician Aleksandr Lyapunov defined it in general terms in 1901, proving its precise mechanism.