Blaise Pascal: biography of this mathematician and thinker

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, philosopher, physicist and theologian who contributed to science with the invention of what would later become the calculator, in addition to laying the foundations for computing.

As a person of his time, the seventeenth century, he touched on various aspects of science and philosophy, earning some his popularity and going down in history for his great mathematical contributions, in addition to being a great defender of the method scientific. Let's look at his life and his contributions.

In this article we will see a biography of Blaise Pascal in summary format.

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Short Biography of Blaise Pascal

Pascal's life, although short, is very interesting, considering his great advances in computation, mathematics and the improvement of barometers. Let's see how he was.

Early years

Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, on June 19, 1623, being the son of Antoinette Begon, who would die when he was 3 years old, and his father Etienne Pascal, who was a local judge, president of the Montferrand tax court and member of the gentry.

Although a law man, Blaise Pascal's father was very interested in science and mathematics, something that aroused curiosity. in the little boy and his two sisters, and one of them, Gilberte Perie, is of special mention, who in her adulthood would write a biography of Blaise.

Trip to Paris and scientific awakening

In 1631 his father decided to move along with his three children to Paris, where he decided to educate them on his own.. The little Pascals, from a very young age, showed good intellectual skills, especially Blaise who, with only eleven years old, would write a small treatise on the sounds that bodies emit in vibration.

Such were young Pascal's interests in mathematics that his father decided to forbid him to continue dedicating himself to it, fearing that it would negatively affect his studies of Latin and Greek, languages ​​that at the time determined the prestige Social.

But preventing him from studying mathematics was really counterproductive, and so Mr. Pascal allowed young Blaise to study EuclidEspecially after seeing one day that his son was secretly writing on a wall a proof that the angles of a triangle add up to two right angles.

He also allowed him to attend lectures given by great scientists and mathematicians of the time, such as Girard Desargues, Claude Mydorge, Gilles de Roberval, Pierre Gassendi and, of course, René Descartes. All of them gave their assemblies in the monastic cell of Father Marin Mersenne.

With sixteen years, Blaise Pascal was interested in a Desartes work on conic sections. It was at that age that he wrote his first serious work on mathematics, called Essai pour les coniques. ("Essay on conics").

Problems with Richelieu

In 1638, due to the financial situation of France and its involvement in the Thirty Years War, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu and French statesman, decided to freeze payments on various services.

This had a negative impact on the Pascal family, since Patriarch Etienne had invested his money in treasury bonds. The wealth of the family collapsed, forcing Etienne Pascal to leave Paris leaving his children in charge of a neighbor. The flight was not solely economic, since Etienne had deeply antagonized Cardinal Richelieu.

With the passage of time, the relationship between Etienne Pascal and the cardinal would be sustained, pardon arriving and being appointed as a tax collector in Normandy.

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Life in Normandy and the invention of the pascaline

The patriarch's life, once re-admitted to public life, became much more pleasant than when he was on the run, but now he was much busier. In 1642, Blaise Pascal, seeing the difficulties his father had when making accounts in his I work as a collector, he decided to make a machine that would allow him to speed up the calculations arithmetic.

It is here when Blaise Pascal builds the Pascalina, the first adding machine in history, which would basically be the precedent to the modern calculator and computers. Its operation was mechanical and was made up of gears.

Although the calculation was extremely helpful, something never seen in French society until then, the machine was not commercially successful: it was extremely expensive and difficult to manufacture.

It was also in the capital of Normandy, Rouen, where Blaise Pascal began to take an interest in physics, especially hydrostatics., undertaking his first studies and experiences on the void, intervening in the controversy about the existence of "horror vacui" in nature.

First and second conversion

By 1645 Pascal had already embraced the Jansenian doctrine, a Catholic reform movement initiated by Corneille Jansen, based on the doctrine of Saint Augustine of Hippo on grace and sin original. He advocated greater moral rigor.

In 1647, due to his weak health, doctors recommended that he return to Paris.. What Blaise Pascal would not know with this rest period is that there he would have a kind of Second Conversion, following the one he had already done when he discovered the Jansenist theses.

Pascal became convinced that the way to God was yes or yes in Christianity, and not in philosophy. At this point Pascal completely suspended his scientific work.

Last years and death

The last 10 years of his life are focused on trying to address how to make people believe that they need to believe in God.. Regardless of its existence or not, according to Pascal it was worth more to believe than not to believe because, in the event that it exists but is not believed, access to heaven cannot be gained.

Pascal's health had always been bad: depressions, toothaches, general weakness are some of the medical problems diagnosed in Blaise Pascal throughout his life.

His death occurred when he had just turned 39, on August 19, 1662, due to stomach cancer.

Intellectual legacy

As a great character of his time, Blaise Pascal was a mathematician, philosopher, Catholic theologian and polymath. He made important contributions in the field of mathematics, in addition to considering, logically, the benefits of believing in God.

Pascal's triangle

In 1653 he published "Traité du triangle arithmétique" ("Treatise on the arithmetic triangle") in which he exposes the approach of what would later be called Pascal's triangle.

This triangle is made up of whole numbers, it is infinite and asymmetric. In the first row starting from the left, the number 1 is placed. In the following rows the numbers are placed so that each one is the sum of the two numbers above it. It is assumed that the area outside the triangle, that is, outside the edges, contains zeros, so that the sum between the outside of the triangle and the first row gives 1.

This triangle has the following properties:

1. First property

The sum of the elements of any row is the result of raising 2 to the number that defines that line, starting with 0. That is, to square 2, to the third, to 4 ...

For example, the sum of the elements in the fourth row (1, 3, 3, 1) is 8, which is also 2 ^ 3.

Another longer example, the sum of the elements in the seventh row (1, 7, 21, 35, 35, 21, 7, 1) is equal to the value obtained from 2 ^ 7.

2. Second property

If the first number in the row is prime, all the numbers in that row will be divisible by it, except the number 1.

For example, in row 9, the numbers that follow are divisible by itself: 36, 84, 126 ...

3. Third property

Any diagonal line starting at one end of the triangle, of any length, it fulfills that the sum of all the numbers that make it up are below the last one, but on the opposite diagonal.

That is, the row of number 4 on the left side can also be found on the right side and, if both are followed down, it will be seen that they coincide in a common value, in this case, 20.

Pascalina: the first calculator

The Pascalina is considered the first modern calculator. Inside there were eight cogwheels connected to each other, which represented the decimal system. Each wheel was marked by 10 numbers, from 0 to 9.

A pair of the 8 wheels of the machine, specifically those on the far left, were used to represent decimals, and the other six were used to represent whole numbers.

This made this machine able to handle values ​​from 0.01 to 999,999.99, which although it may seem trivial to us today, at a time when for getting to do long calculations required several sheets of paper and trusting that you had not made a calculation error, this machine could have been of great help.

Pascal's theorem

Pascal's theorem states that if a hexagon with any shape is inscribed within a conic section, that is, the shape of the hexagon suggests a kind of cone, and the opposite pairs of the sides are extended until they they cross, the three points where they coincide will be located on a straight line. This straight line is what is called Pascal's line.

Probability and Theology: Pascal's Wager

Pascal's bet is a theological-philosophical reflection on belief in God, based on probabilistic considerations, which holds the following:

• Believe in God. If it exists, you go to heaven.
• Believe in God. If he exists, you don't win anything.
• You do not believe in God. If he doesn't exist, you don't win anything.
• You do not believe in God. If it exists, you don't go to heaven.

With these four approaches, Pascal indicates that it is better to believe in God than not to believe in him, because, if he does not exist, nothing is lost, simply the belief that he existed.

On the other hand, if it turns out that God exists and has not been believed in him, based on the foundations of the Catholic religion, which was what Blaise Pascal believed in, not having believed in him and not having accepted his existence minutes before passing away implies a sinful act, with which there is no option to enter heaven.

Contribution to physics

Pascal worked on hydrodynamics and hydrostatics, focusing on the principles of hydraulic fluids. Among his inventions that are still used today we have the hydraulic press and the syringe.

In 1646 the experiments of the Italian Evangelista Torricelli with barometers were already known. After Pascal replicated one of those barometers, he began to wonder what force it was that caused the mercury to remained inside the tube, and what was it that filled the space that remained between this liquid metal and the final part of the tube.

At that time there was a deep debate about the existence of absolute emptiness. Many scientists thought, deepening his thought in Aristotelian notions, that in the world there was a matter invisible, unquantifiable and imperceptible, which occupied the space of that which was not occupied by substances itself. quantifiable.

After a series of works and experiments, Blaise Pascal published his work Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New experiments on vacuum"). Here he details a series of rules that describe up to what points various liquids could be supported by the air pressure, and gave reasons for what might be above the column of liquid, which should be a empty.

His idea of ​​the void, although it was a great milestone for his time, caused him to have conflicts with other important scientists of the time. as René Descartes.

Honors

The figure of Blaise Pascal has not gone unnoticed, and has been the inspiration for several milestones in science that have been named after him in his honor.

In 1970, Swiss professor Niklaus Wirth published a programming language that he named Pascal, after the French scientist. This language has some peculiarities that make it unique, such as the fact that the assignment is performed using the command ": =" instead of "=", the latter being the most common in the languages ​​of programming.

Blaise Pascal has also been remembered putting his name on celestial objects. On the Moon there is the Pascal crater in his honor and, also, a satellite (4500) has been baptized with the name of Pascal.

Bibliographic references:

• Pascal, B. (1654) Traite au Triangle Arithmetique, p. 7, Consequence douziesme, Le 1. und 2.
• Loeffel, H. (1987), Blaise Pascal. 1623-1662, Basel
• Adamson, D. (1995), Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist and Thinker about God, London and New York