Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Blaise Pascal (French: [blɛz paskal]; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines. After three years of effort and fifty prototypes,[1] he invented the mechanical calculator.[2][3] He built 20 of these machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines) in the following ten years.[4] Pascal was an important mathematician, helping create two major new areas of research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. Pascal's results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism.[5] His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health especially after his 18th year and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday.[6]
Quotes·Quotations by Blaise Pascal
Habit
¶ Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I’m very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
Silence
¶ The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.
References
[1]^ (fr) La Machine d’arithmétique, Blaise Pascal, Wikisource
[2]^ Marguin, Jean (1994). Histoire des instruments et machines à calculer, trois siècles de mécanique pensante 1642–1942 (in fr). Hermann. p. 48. ISBN 978-2-7056-6166-3.
[3]^ d'Ocagne, Maurice (1893). Le calcul simplifié (in fr). Gauthier-Villars et fils. p. 245.
[4]^ Mourlevat, Guy (1988). Les machines arithmétiques de Blaise Pascal (in fr). Clermont-Ferrand: La Française d'Edition et d'Imprimerie. p. 12.
[5]^ "Blaise Pascal". Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2009-02-23.
[6]^ Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750, (Wiley Publications, 1990) pp.44
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
