[sorokod]

In what way was it always behind? This work of Fermat and Pascal is ballpark contemporary to the development of calculus.

[seanhunter]

Right, and Cauchy is the person we have to thank for Bayes’ Theorem, and of course Euler, De Moivre, Poisson and Gauss for the Gaussian integral[1]. You can’t really get figures more central to mathematics than that.

[1] Athough Gauss apparently credited it to Laplace.

[sorokod]

Most of the names you mention belong to the next (18th) century.

Gauss worked out some sort of probability distribution too.