Cannot know all, so know little about everything... (Quip of the day - Blaise Pascal
Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything,
we ought to know a little about everything.
- Blaise Pascal
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Blaise Pascal (French pronunciation: [blɛz paskal]), (June 19, 1623,
in Clermont-Ferrand, France – August 19, 1662) was a French
mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child
prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's
earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made
important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators,
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.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two
major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the
subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, 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. His results caused
many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious
movement within Catholicism know by its detractors as Jansenism.[1]
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 arithmetic of
triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use
in calculating the volume of solids.
Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two
months after his 39th birthday.[2]
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris.
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the sum of the two directly above
it. The triangle demonstrates many mathematical properties in addition
to showing binomial coefficients.
