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The French mathematician, theologian, physicist and man-of-letters, Blaise Pascal is a mathematician who has a reputation that rests more on what he might have done rather than what he might have actually done. Pascal has devoted a considerable amount of his life towards the devotion of religious exercise. Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne. Which is now known as Clermont-Ferrand, on June 19, 1623. And he died in Paris on Aug. 19, 1662. Pascal was the son of the president of the Court of Exchequer.
After Pascal's mother died in 1630 his father who also had a scientific reputation moved to Paris in 1631 to pursue his own scientific studies, and also to continue his children's education. Pascal had displayed an exceptional amount of academic ability therefore he was kept at home to ensure his academic stability. Pascal had a natural desire for the science of constructing figures and determining the proportions between their different parts. He soon discovered that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. By the age of fourteen he was admitted to the weekly meetings of Roberval, Mersenne, Mydorge, and other French geometricians; from which, ultimately, the French Academy sprung. At sixteen Pascal wrote an essay on conic sections.
Blaise Pascal with Pierre de Fermat, they invented the calculus of probabilities, which laid foundation for Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz's calculus. In 1647 Pascal invented calculating machine, which made him one of the fathers of the Computer Age. Later he developed the barometer, the hydraulic press, and the syringe. In 1653 he had to administer his father's estate.
Pascal's other important scientific contributions include the derivation of Pascal's law or principle, which states that fluids transmit pressures equally in all directions, and his investigations in the geometry of infinitesimals. Around this time he invented the arithmetical triangle, and in conjunction with Fermat created the calculus of probabilities. Pascal died at the age of 39 in intense pain after a malignant growth in his stomach spread to the brain. His most famous work is the Pensees (Thoughts); a set of deeply personal meditations in somewhat fragmented form on human suffering and faith in God. 'Pascal's wager' expresses the conviction that belief in God is rational: if God does not exist, one stands to lose nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing.
Pascal's early essay on the geometry of conics, written in 1639, was not published until 1779. Pascal developed a theorem known now as "Pascal's Theorem." Which basically says that if a hexagon is inscribed in a conic, the points of intersection of the opposite sides will lie in a straight line. Later he developed that if a quadrilateral be inscribed in a conic, and a straight line be drawn cutting the sides taken in order in the points A, B, C, and D, and the conic in P and Q, then PA. PC: PB. PD = QA. QC: QB.
QD. Then Pascal employed his arithmetical triangle in 1653, there was no evidence of his method was printed till 1665. An example of the triangle is constructed n the figure below, each horizontal line being formed form the one above it by making every number in it equal to the sum of those above and to the left of it in the row immediately above it: The numbers in each line are what are now called figurate numbers. Those in the first line are called numbers of the first order; those in the second line, natural numbers or numbers of the second order; those in the third line, numbers of the third order, and so on.
It is easily shown that the mth number in the nth row is (m+n- 2)! / (m- 1)! (n- 1)! Pascal's arithmetical triangle, to any required order, is got by drawing a diagonal downwards from right to left as in the figure. The numbers in any diagonal give the coefficients of the expansion of a binomial; for example, the figures in the fifth diagonal, namesake the coefficients of the expansion. Pascal used the triangle partly for this purpose, and partly to find the numbers of combinations of m things taken n at a time, which he stated, correctly, to be (n+ 1) (n+ 2) (n+ 3)... m / (m-n)! In my opinion Pascal was the most scientific, and mathematical thinker.
Pascal was one of the most eminent mathematicians and physicists of his time and one of the greatest writers in Christian literature. He is generally ranked among the finest French religious writers, and mathematicians. Bibliography: Bishop, Morris, Pascal, the Life of Genius (1936; repr. 1968); Wright, D. Franklin, Intermediate Algebra. Hawkes Publishing. 2000 web, Pascal, Blaise web Pascal. html, Pascal, Blaise
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Research essay sample on Blaise Pascal Straight Line
