Who was Blaise Pascal?

Question

how did he help the way we think about mathematics

Answer 1

Blaise Pascal (pronounced [blez pɑskɑl]), (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father. 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 powerfully in defense of the scientific method.

He was a mathematician of the first order. Pascal 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 corresponded with Pierre de Fermat from 1654 on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.

Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he 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. However, he had suffered from ill-health throughout his life and his new interests were ended by his early death two months after his 39th birthday.

Answer 2

Invented one of the first mechanical calculators: the pascaline
He was a mathematician of the first order. Pascal 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 corresponded with Pierre de Fermat from 1654 on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.

Answer 3

French mathematician, philosopher, and religious figure. He studied the region above the mercury in a barometer, maintaining that it was a vacuum. In his investigations of the barometer, he found that the height to which the mercury rose was the same regardless of shape. Based on his double vacuum experiment, he formulated Pascal's principle, which states that the pressure is constant throughout a static fluid. He performed an experiment in which he convinced his brother-in-law to climb the Puy-de-Dôme Mountain in France. He found the height of the mercury dropped with altitude, indicating pressure decreases with altitude.

Pascal also designed and built mechanical adding machines, and incorporated a company in 1649 to produce and market them. Unfortunately, the machines were rather highly priced and had reliability problems. Only seven of Pascal's devices survive today.

Pascal suffered from serious health problems, and spent most of his final years writing on religious philosophy.

Answer 4

The guy was a french math whiz and had a quote I'll never forget called Pascal's Wager. He invented his own calculator which basically sums it all up when it comes to his brain. He was born in the 17th century and his wager was something along the lines of,"If you believe in God and he doesn't exist, you lose nothing; but if you don't believe in God and he does exist, you lose everything."

Answer 5

He was a miserable unyielding bugger who rejected everything left, right and centre. Someone once suggested that he take his grandmother for high tea, and in a fit of rejection threw her down a flight of stairs. On another occasion, a passenger of his carriage suggested giving other carriages on the High-street more space, and just so he could reject such suggestion he pulled into the centre of the street causing a multi carriage pile up! Bonnets, horses and crinoline dressed women went flying all over the shop!

Answer 6

A French mathemetician, who lived in the 1600's. Did lots of work on projective geometry and conic sections, and working with Fermat he laid the foundation for the theory of probability.
A computer programming language is named after him.

Answer 7

I think he was the guy who came up with the binomial theorem.

Answer 8

By killing jews