Term Papers on Blaise Pascal

Term Paper Title	Blaise Pascal
# of Words	839
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.36

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont on June 19, 1623, and died in Paris on Aug. 19, 1662. His father, a local judge at Clermont, and himself of some scientific reputation, moved to Paris in 1631, for two main reasons, to prosecute his own scientific studies, and to carry on the education of his only son, who had already displayed exceptional ability. Pascal was kept at home in order to ensure his not being overworked.  Surprisingly, Pascal’s family directed his education to foreign languages and did not teach him mathematics.  Naturally, this excited the boy's curiosity, and one day, when he was twelve years old; he asked what geometry consisted of. His tutor told him that it was the science of constructing exact figures and determining the proportions between their different parts. Pascal, gave up his play-time to this new study, and in a few weeks had discovered for himself many properties of figures, and in particular the proposition that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. His father, struck by this display of ability, gave him a copy of Euclid's Elements, a book that Pascal read constantly and soon mastered.
When Pascal was fourteen he was admitted to the weekly meetings of Roberval, Mersenne, Mydorge, and other French geometricians; from which, later the French Academy sprung. At the age of sixteen Pascal wrote an essay on conic sections, and in 1641, at the age of eighteen, he constructed the first arithmetical machine, an instrument which, eight years later, he further improved. His correspondence with Fermat about this time shows that he was then turning his attention to analytical geometry and physics.
In 1653 he had to administer his father's estate. He now took up his old life again, and made several experiments on the pressure exerted by gases and liquids.  It was also about this time that he invented the arithmetical triangle, and together with Fermat created the calculus of probabilities.
Pascal is also famous for his Provincial Letters directed against the Jesuits, and his Pensées, which were written towards the close of his life.  They are the first examples of that finished form which is characteristic of the best French literature. The only mathematical work that he produced after retiring to Port Royal was the essay on the cycloid in 1658. He ...

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