Blaise Pascal By Lena Slysheva

Biography BLAISE PASCAL WAS A FRENCH MATHEMATICIAN, SCIENTIST, RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHER AND WRITER WHO MADE IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO ALL THESE FIELDS. A CHILD PRODIGY, PASCAL DISCOVERED THE PASCALS THEOREM IN PROJECTIVE GEOMETRY AND INVENTED THE FIRST FULLY FUNCTIONAL MECHANICAL CALCULATOR BEFORE HE REACHED THE AGE OF 20. PASCAL SUFFERED FROM ILL HEALTH THROUGH MOST OF HIS LIFE AND DIED AT AN EARLY AGE OF 39. KNOW MORE ABOUT THE FAMILY, LIFE, CAREER AND IMPORTANT WORKS OF BLAISE PASCAL THROUGH THESE 3 INTERESTING FACTS.

Fact #1 HE WAS EDUCATED BY HIS FATHER AND NEVER ATTENDED ANY SCHOOL OR UNIVERSITY When Blaise was three years old, his mother Antoinette died. His father Etienne was a magistrate, civil servant and member of the French aristocratic and professional class known as the noblesse de robe. The Pascal family enjoyed a comfortable, upper-bourgeois lifestyle. In 1631, five years after the death of his wife, Etienne moved with his children to Paris. Over the next nine years, he devoted himself to his amateur scientific and mathematical pursuits; and to the education of his children, all of whom showed extraordinary intellectual ability. In fact, Blaise Pascal never attended any school or university

Fact #2 PASCAL INVENTED THE WORLDS FIRST FULLY FUNCTIONAL MECHANICAL CALCULATOR AT THE AGE OF 19 In 1639, Pascals father Étienne was appointed commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen. To help his father in laborious tax calculations, in 1642, 19-year old Blaise Pascal constructed a mechanical calculator capable of performing addition and subtraction directly; and multiplication and division through repeated addition or subtraction. Known as Pascals calculator or the Pascaline, it was especially successful in the design of its carry mechanism, which adds 1 to 9 on one dial, and when it changes from 9 to 0, carries 1 to the next dial. The Pascaline was worlds first fully functional mechanical calculator, and in 1649 Pascal received a royal patent on the device. A few decades before Pascal, German professor Wilhelm Schickard had made a failed attempt at mechanizing calculation.

Fact #3 HE FOUNDED THE THEORY OF PROBABILITY WHILE SOLVING GAMBLING PROBLEMS WITH HIS FRIEND A couple of years after his first conversion, Blaise Pascal retreated from his pledge to serve only God and resumed his scientific endeavors. This phase in his life lasted from 1648 to 1654 and it is often termed by historians as his worldly period. During this period, Pascal proved through his famous experiment at the Puy-de-Dôme that atmospheric pressure decreases with height; and independently arrived at the Pascals triangle, a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients. Though Pascals triangle was known to other cultures for many centuries, it was Blaise Pascal who popularized it in the Western world and hence it bears his name. Also in 1654, Pascal corresponded on the subject of gambling problems with his friend Pierre de Fermat, a lawyer, an amateur mathematician and a noted gambler. Together the two effectively founded the modern theory of probability; considered Pascals most influential contribution to mathematics.

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