Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” This is the philosophy of Blaise Pascal about Heart which means that We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart. 

Blaise Pascal is an Inventor, a mathematician, a physicist and a theological writer who is born on June 19, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, France. He was the third of four children and only son to Etienne and Antoinette Pascal. His mother passed away when Blaise was just a toddler and he became exceptionally close to his two sisters Gilberte and Jacqueline. His father, Etienne, was a tax collector in Rouen and talented mathematician. Etienne moved the family to Paris in 1631. He had decided to educate Blaise —a child prodigy—at home so he could design an unorthodox curriculum and make sure that Blaise was able to express his own innate curiosity. It's also believed that Blaise may have been educated at home due to issues around his health. Ironically, Etienne omitted mathematics from his son's early curriculum out of concern that Blaise would become so fascinated with geometry that he wouldn’t be able to focus on classical subjects. The beginning of Blaise’s education was geared toward languages, especially Latin and Greek. Even so, Etienne's plan backfired: The fact that mathematics was a forbidden topic made the subject even more interesting to the inquisitive boy, who at the age of 12 began exploring geometry on his own. He made up his own terminology, not having learned official mathematical terms, and quickly managed to work out that the sum of a triangle's angles that are equal to two right angles.

 Blaise Pascal wrote 30 books. His most popular books are the Pensèes, Human Happiness, The Mind on Fire: Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent, Foundations of the Christian Religion, and Daily Readings with Blaise Pascal. He also invented the following: The Pascaline, the invention of this mathematical machine became helpful for math problems. At the age of 18, Blaise invented a numeric wheel calculator, referred to as Pascaline. Its purpose was to help his father count taxes that he collected. Wrist Watch, He was the very first man who wore a wrist watch through the use of a piece of string, he attached his pocket size watch in his wrist. Roulette Machine, he introduced a prehistoric roulette machine during the 17th century. It was one of the by-products of Blaise which attempted him to create a continuous moving machine. Pascal Pa, the unit of atmospheric pressure that was included on his inventions. Pa is the force of a certain newton which is present in the surface area. Pascal Triangle, he was not the first person who worked in forming the Pascal triangle. Islamic and Chinese mathematician worked on it previously for years. Proceeding the completion of the Pascal triangle, Blaise invented the Arithmetical Triangle in 1653 that gained in popularity. Provincial letters, are series of letters that he wrote underneath a false name, cruelly poke fun at the controversy in the immediate power of salvation and in the practice of Jesuit for casuistry. The inventions of Blaise Pascal were considered to be essential to the everyday life of many. Majority of his inventions have been used and incorporated by several companies and continually improved upon in order to advance the technology and pertinence with the role they play today. In 1968 a programming language (PASCAL) was named after Pascal. Blaise Pascal was awarded with the award of Distinction. There are not even words that can describe how important Blaise Pascal’s contributions are to math, today and forever. All we can do to begin to honor this great man is award him with the Noble Prize, which he rightfully deserves.

Pascal had struggled with insomnia and a digestive disorder from the time he was a teen, and as such he was known to have suffered greatly from pain throughout his life. Over the years, Pascal’s constant work took a further toll on his already fragile health. In Paris on 18 August 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. Pascal died of a malignant stomach tumor at his sister Gilberte's home in Paris on August 19, 1662. By then, the tumor had metastasized in his brain. He died at the age of 39. 

Pascal's best known foray into the Philosophy of Religion known as Pascal’s Wager in which he explains that since God might or might not exist, you might as well act as if he does, since if you’re wrong you lose nothing, but if you’re right you gain eternal happiness. So, it is rational to believe in God, even if there is no evidence that he exists. He already proved himself a mathematician at the age of 11 or 12 by writing his first mathematical treatises. He constructed a mechanical calculator known as Pascal's Calculator (or the Pascaline) at the age of 18. He also completed another mathematical milestone in which he described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients called Pascal'sTriangle. He corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on the new mathematical theory of probabilities, and their work on the calculus of probabilities. He also pursued the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the early work of Evangelista Torricelli on barometers, which he first encountered in 1646. His inventions include the hydraulic press and the syringe. He also gave one of the 17th Century's major statements on the scientific method: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity".