THEOREMknown as Pascal’s Theorem when published in 1779.
At 18 he invented the first digital calculator. Pascal was
intrigued with experiments on atmospheric pressure and
vacuums. He published New Experiments Concerning Vacuums
in 1647, but this work was not well received by the scientific
community. In fact, after a two-day visit with Pascal, RENÉ
DESCARTESwrote a letter to a fellow mathematician saying that
Pascal had “too much vacuum in his head.” Pascal’s law of
pressure, explained in his Treatise on the Equilibrium of
Liquids,published in 1653, is considered a major contribution
to physical theory. In this same year, he came up with his idea
for the arithmetical triangle, now known as PASCAL’S TRIANGLE,
published in his Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle.The
following year, Pascal began writing to PIERRE DE FERMAT
about an idea he had, and in the course of five letters between
them, they came up with the theory of PROBABILITY. Pascal
became deeply religious when his father died, and after nearly
suffering a fatal accident himself at the age of 31, coupled with
ill health and severe pain that plagued him most of his life, he
abandoned mathematics and devoted himself to religion. His
philosophical book on life and death, Pensées,written between
1656 and 1658, nonetheless showed his natural bias towards
mathematics. In it, he stated that “if God does not exist, one
will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist,
one will lose everything by not believing.” This reasoning
ultimately became known as Pascal’s wager.Ptolemy, Claudius(ca. 85–168) Known for his astronomy, this Greek
mathematician and philosopher wrote the famous series of books
known as The Almagest,defining the then-known universe
mathematically in a series of 13 books. With the original Greek
title of He Mathematike Syntaxis,or (The Mathematical
Compilation),the book was eventually translated into Arabic and
given the title Al-Majisti.The Latin translation of the Arabic title
became Almagest,and the book became the definitive text on
astronomy until Nicolas Copernicus’s theory emerged some
1,400 years later. Ptolemy’s mathematical computations were
geometric and trigonometric in nature, and dealt with devising
tables of CHORDs, solving PLANEand spherical TRIANGLEs, and
using measurements of degrees, minutes, and seconds for
ANGLEs. He is considered the first person to ever calculate sines.
Ptolemy BIOGRAPHIES
Ptolemy BIOGRAPHIES
Blaise Pascal (Courtesy of AIP
Emilio Segrè Visual Archives,
E. Scott Barr Collection)