Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( , , ; ; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer.Pascal was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. His earliest mathematical work was on conic sections; he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16. He later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. In 1642, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines), establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator.
Like his contemporary René Descartes, Pascal was also a pioneer in the natural and applied sciences. Pascal wrote in defense of the scientific method and produced several controversial results. He made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Following Torricelli and Galileo Galilei, he rebutted the likes of Aristotle and Descartes who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum in 1647.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the and the ''Pensées'', the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. The latter contains Pascal's wager, known in the original as the ''Discourse on the Machine'', a fideistic probabilistic argument for God's existence. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids. Provided by Wikipedia
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1by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1890London, Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh [1890?]324 p. 20 cm. -
2by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1663A Paris, Chez G. Desprez, 1663.14 p. l., 232, [7] p. 2 fold. pl. 15 x 9 cm. -
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4by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1849London; Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849.xliv, 410 p. 21 cm.Center for Research Libraries
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5by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1688A Amsterdam, Chez Abraham Wolfgang, 1688.42, [2] p., 1. l., [52], 242, [14], 119 p. 16 cm. -
6by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1849London; Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849.xliv, 410 p. 21 cm. -
7by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1658Coloniæ, apud Nicolaum Schouten. 1658.16 p.l., 608, [3] p. 19 cm. -
8by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1657A Cologne, Chez Pierre de la Vallée, 1657.4 p. ̋., [168] p. 24 cm. -
9by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1670A Paris, Chez Guillaume Desprez, 1670.40 p. l., 334 (i.e. 358), [20] p. 16 cm. -
10by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1688London : Printed for Jacob Tonson ..., 1688.[42], 263 pages, [8], 269-375 pages. -
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12by Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662
Published 1943Bruxelles, Office de publicité, 1943.2 p. l., [7]-74 p. incl. front. (port.) 20 cm. -
13by Seidmann, Ludwig Elias, 1912-
Published 1937Breslau : M. & M. Marcus, 1937.iii, 39 p. ; 21 cm.Other Authors: “...Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662...”
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14A Paris, Chez la veuve Charles Savreux. M.DC.LXX.13 p.l., 426 p. 16 cm.Other Authors: “...Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662...”