Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont, Auvergne, France on June 19, 1628.

He was the son of Étienne Pascal, his father, and Antoinette Bégone, his mother who died when Blaise was only four years old. After her death, his only family was his father and his two sisters, Gilberte, and Jacqueline, both of whom played key roles in Pascal's life. When Blaise was seven he moved from

Clermont with his father and sisters to Paris. It was at this time that his father began to school his son. Though being strong intellectually, Blaise had a pathetic physique.

Things went quite well at first for Blaise concerning his schooling.

His father was amazed at the ease his son was able to absorb the classical education thrown at him and "tried to hold the boy down to a reasonable pace to avoid injuring his health." (P 74,Bell) Blaise was exposed to all subjects, all except mathematics, which was taboo. His father forbid this from him in the belief that Blaise was strain his mind. Faced with this opposition, Blaise demanded to know ‘what was mathematics?' His father told him, "that generally speaking, it was the way of making precise figures and finding the proportions among them." (P 39,Cole) This set him going and during his play times in this room he figured out ways to draw geometric figures such as perfect circles, and equilateral triangles, all of this he accomplished. Due to the fact that É tienne took such painstaking measures to hide mathematics from Blaise, to the point where he told his friends not to mention math at all around him, Blaise did not know the names to these figures. So he created his own vocab for them, calling a circle a "round" and lines he named "bars". "After these definitions he made himself axioms, and finally made perfect demonstrations." (P 39,Cole)

His progression was far enough that he reached the 32nd proposition of Euclid's

Book one. Deeply enthralled in this task his father entered the room un-noticed only to observe his son, inventing mathematics. At the age of 13 Étienne began taking Blaise to meetings of mathematicians and scientists which gave Blaise the opportunity to meet with such minds as Descartes and Hobbes. Three years later at the age of 16 Blaise amazed his peers by submitting ...

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...arried out.

The reason for this difference is because the air weights down on the quicksilver in the dish beneath the lower tube, and thus the quicksilver which is inside that tube is held suspened in balence.

But it does not weigh down upon the quicksilver at the curved end of the upper tube, for the finger or bladder sealing this prevents any access to it, so that, as no air is pressing down at this point, the quicksilver in the upper tube drops freely because there is nothing to hold it up or to resist its fall.

All of these contibutions have made a lasting impact of all of mankind.

Everything that Pascal created is still in use today in someway or another. His primative form of a syringe is still used in the medical field today to administer drugs and remove blood. The work he did on combinatory mathematics can be applied by anyone to ‘figure out the odds' concerning a situation, which is exactly how he used it; by going to casinos and playing games smart.

Something that anyone can do today. The work he did concerning hydrolic pressses are still in use today in factories, and car garages.