Blaise Pascal Biography and Quotes
Birthday: June 19th, 1623
Commemoration: August 19th, 1662
Nationality: French
39
Years Old
Famously Known For
Blaise Pascal is known for formulating Pascal’s principle of pressure applied in physics.
He is also remembered as a great religious philosopher who developed a doctrine which taught people about the experience of God through the heart as opposed to reason.
Pascal is also recognized for developing the first calculator that could add and subtract figures.
Early Life
Pascal was born in France in a town known as Clermont-Ferrand. He was the son of Etienne Pascal, a judge in their town’s tax court. Unluckily, Blaise lost his mother in 1626, when he was only three years old.
Blaise and his two sisters took their studies from home under the tutorship of their father, who did not like how schools taught back then. Being a mathematician, Blaise’s father knew how enticing Geometry would be if taught to his children. He banned them from learning mathematics and focused on teaching them Latin and Greek.
Nonetheless, the ban aroused more interest in geometry in Blaise. At the age of 16, Blaise had already written his first mathematics book titled, Essay on Conics. The novel dealt with the geometrical aspects of cones.
Personal Life
Not much is known about Pascal’s own life apart from his religious life. In the year 1646, Pascal’s father got injured, and in the process of receiving treatment, Pascal and his sisters were introduced into Jansenism. Three years after the death of Estienne pascal, Pascal joined his sister at the Port Royal convent, and it is in this period that Pascal wrote the famous writings: the provincial letters and the Pensees.
Career
Pascal’s main focus was on mathematics, and he lived his life writing on various mathematical topics. His most significant contribution to mathematics was Pascal’s probability theory, which is very useful in modern economics and actuarial science. It is important to note that Pascal worked on the Project with a friend, Pierre de Fermat.
Death
Pascal died out of sickness in 1962. An autopsy carried on his body proved that he either had stomach ulcers or tuberculosis.
