21. Pascal Summary blaise pascal (16231662) blaise pascal was a very influencial French mathematician and philosopher who contributed to many areas of mathematics. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pascal.html

Blaise Pascal Click the picture above to see eight larger pictures Blaise Pascal was a very influencial French mathematician and philosopher who contributed to many areas of mathematics. He worked on conic sections and projective geometry and in correspondence with Fermat he laid the foundations for the theory of probability. Full MacTutor biography [Version for printing] List of References (53 books/articles) Some Quotations A Poster of Blaise Pascal Mathematicians born in the same country Show birthplace location Additional Material in MacTutor Pascal's calculator: the Pascaline Another picture of it Gilberte Pascal: The life of Pascal Honours awarded to Blaise Pascal (Click below for those honoured in this way) Lunar features Crater Pascal Paris street names Rue Pascal (3rd and 5th Arrondissements) Other Web sites Encyclopaedia Britannica Astroseti (A Spanish translation of this biography) NNDB The Galileo Project Rouse Ball The Catholic Encyclopedia ... Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Pascal's wager) Fourmilab (Pascal's Calculator) Previous (Chronologically) Next Main Index Previous (Alphabetically) Next Biographies index JOC/EFR © December 1996 The URL of this page is: http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Pascal.html

22. Blaise Pascal From Oregon State University. Includes biographical sketch, timeline, and searchable texts of the Pensees and Provincial Letters. http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/pascal.html

BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662) "Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing of this. Pensees Pascal was a child prodigy, who was educated by his father. He was a mathematician of the first order. At 16 he wrote the Essai pour les coniques which was published in 1640. In 1642 he invented a calculating machine to help his father, who served as Royal Tax Commissioner at Rouen. Pascal is often credited with the discovery of the mathematical theory of probability, and he also made serious contributions to number theory and geometry. In 1646 Pascal learned of Toricelli's experiments with the barometer and the theory of air preassure. These experiments involved placing a tube of mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury. Pascal repeated Toricelli's experiments and did more work which led to the publication of Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide in 1647. Aristotle had argued against the atomists that nature abhors a vacume. This was a view still strongly held in the seventeenth century, even by such anti-Aristotelians as Descartes and Hobbes. In the

23. Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662) -- From Eric Weisstein's World Of Scientific Biograph Bell, E. T. Greatness and the Misery of Man pascal. Ch. 5 in Men of Mathematics The Lives and Achievements of the Great Mathematicians from Zeno to http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Pascal.html

Branch of Science Mathematicians Nationality French Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662) French mathematician, philosopher, and religious figure. He studied the region above the mercury in a barometer maintaining that it was a vacuum. In his investigations of the barometer he found that the height to which the mercury rose was the same regardless of shape. Based on his double vacuum experiment, he formulated Pascal's principle Pascal also designed and built mechanical adding machines, and incorporated a company in 1649 to produce and market them. Unfortunately, the machines were rather highly priced and had reliability problems. Only seven of Pascal's devices survive today. Pascal suffered from serious health problems, and spent most of his final years writing on religious philosophy. Additional biographies: MacTutor (St. Andrews) Dublin Trinity College Bonn Bell, E. T. "Greatness and the Misery of Man: Pascal." Ch. 5 in New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 73-89, 1986.

24. Blaise Pascal - Biography Of Blaise Pascal And The Pascaline blaise pascal French scientist and mathematician invented the first digital calculator. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpascal.htm

zJs=10 zJs=11 zJs=12 zJs=13 zc(5,'jsc',zJs,9999999,'') You are here: About Inventors Famous Inventors Inventor Biography Sites ... P Start Inventors Blaise Pascal - Biography of Blaise Pascal and the Pascaline Inventors Inventors Essentials Beginners' 101 Turn Ideas Into Money ... Help Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal is credited with inventing an early calculator. Blaise Pascal on the Web Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal Biography Blaise Pascal - Biography Blaise Pascal ... PENSEES by Blaise Pascal Related Innovations Mathematians Calculators French Inventors By Mary Bellis Blaise Pascal, the French scientist was one of the most reputed mathematician and physicist of his time. He is credited with inventing an early calculator, amazingly advanced for its time. A genuis from a young age, Blaise Pascal composed a treatise on the communication of sounds at the age of twelve, and at the age of sixteen he composed a treatise on conic sections. The Pascaline The idea of using machines to solve mathematical problems can be traced at least as far as the early 17th century. Mathematicians who designed and implemented calculators that were capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division included Wilhelm Schickhard, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibnitz. In 1642, at the age of eighteen Blaise Pascal invented his numerical wheel calculator called the Pascaline to help his father a French tax collector count taxes. The Pascaline had eight movable dials that added up to eight figured long sums and used base ten. When the first dial (one's column) moved ten notches - the second dial moved one notch to represent the ten's column reading of 10 - and when the ten dial moved ten notches the third dial (hundred's column) moved one notch to represent one hundred and so on.

25. Blaise Pascal, Existentialism And Blaise Pascal, The Realm Of Existentialism At blaise pascal, French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. pascal laid the foundation for the modern theory of http://www.dividingline.com/private/Philosophy/Philosophers/Pascal/pascal.shtml

existentialism and Blaise Pascal at The Realm of Existentialism -:- Blaise Pascal Reading List by Katharena -:- Blaise Pascal Essentials Existentialism Philosophical Movements ... Religious Studies Blaise Pascal, born June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, Fr. died Aug. 19, 1662, Paris. Pascal was a French mathematician, philosopher and inventor. His early work included the invention of the adding machine and syringe, and the co-development with Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability. Later Pascal became a Jansenist and wrote on philosophy and theology, notably as collected in the posthumous Pensées. His ideas on inner religion influenced Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri Bergson, and the Existentialists. existentialism and Blaise Pascal born June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, France died August 19, 1662, Paris, France The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread. Blaise Pascal -:- Pascal Reading List by Katharena -:- Blaise Pascal: Main Page Thought Provoking Quotes by Pascal ... Existential Divas! Featured Book Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. Pascal laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal's law of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. The establishment of his principle of intuitionism had an impact on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and also on the Existentialists.

26. Blaise Pascal Quotes - The Quotations Page blaise pascal; I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man s being unable to sit blaise pascal, Lettres provinciales , letter 16, 1657 http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Blaise_Pascal/

Quotation Search by keyword or author: Home Weblog Quotes of the Day Motivational ... Read books online at our other site: The Literature Page Quotations by Author Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) French mathematician, physicist [more author details] Showing quotations 1 to 14 of 14 total Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves. Blaise Pascal - More quotations on: [ Love Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth. Blaise Pascal I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room. Blaise Pascal - More quotations on: [ Mankind Evil If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. Blaise Pascal Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed. Blaise Pascal Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction. Blaise Pascal - More quotations on: [ Evil One must know oneself, if this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

27. Inventor Blaise Pascal Biography Fascinating facts about blaise pascal inventor of the mechanical adding machine in 1642. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/pascal.htm

Fascinating facts about Blaise Pascal inventor of a mechanical adding machine in 1642. Blaise Pascal Inventor: Blaise Pascal Criteria: First to invent. First practical. Birth: June 19, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, France Death: August 19, 1662 in Paris, France Nationality: French Blaise Pascal, French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, considered one of the great minds in Western intellectual history. Inventor of the first mechanical adding machine. Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand on June 19, 1623, and his family settled in Paris in 1629. Under the tutelage of his father, Pascal soon proved himself a mathematical prodigy, and at the age of 16 he formulated one of the basic theorems of projective geometry, known as Pascal's theorem and described in his Essai pour les coniques (Essay on Conics, 1639). In 1642 he invented the first mechanical adding machine. Pascal proved by experimentation in 1648 that the level of the mercury column in a barometer is determined by an increase or decrease in the surrounding atmospheric pressure rather than by a vacuum, as previously believed. This discovery verified the hypothesis of the Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli concerning the effect of atmospheric pressure on the equilibrium of liquids. Six years later, in conjunction with the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat, Pascal formulated the mathematical theory of probability, which has become important in such fields as actuarial, mathematical, and social statistics and as a fundamental element in the calculations of modern theoretical physics.

28. Blaise Pascal - MSN Encarta pascal, blaise (162362), French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, considered one of the great minds in Western intellectual history. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570097/Pascal_Blaise.html

var s_account="msnportalencarta"; MSN home Mail My MSN Sign in ... more Hotmail Messenger My MSN MSN Directory Air Tickets/Travel Autos City Guides Election 2008 ... More Additional Reference Materials Thesaurus Translations Multimedia Other Resources Education Resources Math Help Foreign Language Help Project Planner ... Help Related Items 17th Century French Literature: Prose Computers: Pascal’s calculating machine more... Encarta Search Search Encarta about Blaise Pascal Also on Encarta Secret students What colleges really want Famous misquotes quiz Advertisement Blaise Pascal Encyclopedia Article Find Print E-mail Blog It Multimedia 3 items Article Outline Introduction Later Life and Works Evaluation I Introduction Print this section Blaise Pascal (1623-62), French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, considered one of the great minds in Western intellectual history. Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand on June 19, 1623, and his family settled in Paris in 1629. Under the tutelage of his father, Pascal soon proved himself a mathematical prodigy, and at the age of 16 he formulated one of the basic theorems of projective geometry, known as Pascal's theorem and described in his Essai pour les coniques II Later Life and Works Print this section Pascal espoused Jansenism and in 1654 entered the Jansenist community at Port Royal, where he led a rigorously ascetic life until his death eight years later. In 1656 and 1657 he wrote the famous 18

29. Blaise Pascal (Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy) Meantime, France had declared war on Spain in 1635, and this intermittent campaign lasted for most of blaise pascal s life. The external and internal http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal/

Cite this entry Search the SEP Advanced Search Tools ... Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia Free Blaise Pascal First published Tue 21 Aug, 2007 Pascal did not publish any philosophical works during his relatively brief lifetime. His status in French literature today is based primarily on the posthumous publication of a notebook in which he drafted or recorded ideas for a defence of Christianity, the (1670). His philosophical commitments can be gleaned from the contributions he made to scientific and theological debates in France in the mid-seventeenth century. 1. Life and Works 2. Nature and Grace 3. Free Will 4. Theory of Knowledge ... Related Entries 1. Life and Works La vie de M. Pascal Vie : I, 69). Gilberte's biography also confirms that, as his sisters matured, they assumed many of the nursing responsibilities for their infirm brother that would otherwise have been assigned to his mother. Essai pour les coniques (1648). Pascal argued, mistakenly, that the experiment guaranteed his interpretation of its results [see below, Section 4]. parlement which, like much of his other work, remained unpublished until after his death. In fact, as Edwards explains (Hammond, 2003: Chapter 3), Pascal's contribution to probability theory was not recognised until it was used by Bernoulli in the early eighteenth century.

30. CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Blaise Pascal SAINTBEUVE, Port-Royal, I, II, III (Paris, 1880); VINET, Etude sur blaise pascal (Paris, 1848); SULLY-PRUDHOMME, La vraie religion selon pascal (Paris, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11511a.htm

Home Encyclopedia Summa Fathers ... P > Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal Born at Clermont-Ferrand, 19 June 1623; died in Paris , 19 August 1662. He was the son of Etienne Pascal, advocate at the court of Aids of Clermont Paris . He taught his son grammar, Latin, Spanish, and mathematics, all according to an original method. In his twelfth year Blaise composed a treatise on the communication of sounds; at sixteen another treatise, on conic sections. In 1639 he went to Rouen with his father , who had been appointed intendant of Normandy , and, to assist his father in his calculations, he invented the arithmetical machine. He repeated Torricelli's Paris Abel Lefranc "Revue Bleue", 1906; Strowski, "Pascal", Paris, 1908). He published works on the arithmetical triangle, on wagers and the theory of probabilities, and on the roulette or cycloid. Meanwhile, in 1646, he had been won over to Jansenism , and induced his family , especially his sister Jacqueline, to follow in the same direction. In 1650, after a sojourn in Auvergne, his family returned to Paris . On the advice of physicians Pascal, who had always been ailing and who now suffered more than ever, relaxed his labours and mingled in

31. Blaise Pascal Collection At Bartleby.com An online version of the Harvard Classics pascal volume. Includes Thoughts, Letters and various lesser works including the Preface to the Treatise on the http://www.bartleby.com/people/Pascal-B.html

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32. Island Of Freedom - Blaise Pascal The French thinker, mathematician, and scientist blaise pascal has been credited not only with imaginative and subtle work in geometry and other branches of http://www.island-of-freedom.com/PASCAL.HTM

Island of Freedom Plato Aristotle Aurelius Plotinus ... Wittgenstein To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. Blaise Pascal Home Theologians Philosophers Poets ... Siddhartha Blaise Pascal PLACES: Blaise Pascal - from History of Mathematics Archive Pascal - adapted from A Short Account of the History of Mathematics by W. W. Rouse Ball (4th Edition, 1908) WORKS: Pensées Pensées Provincial Letters The French thinker, mathematician, and scientist Blaise Pascal has been credited not only with imaginative and subtle work in geometry and other branches of mathematics, but with profoundly influencing later generations of theologians and philosophers, and is considered one of the greatest minds in Western intellectual history. Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand on June 19, 1623, and his family settled in Paris in 1629. Under the tutelage of his father, Pascal soon proved himself a mathematical prodigy, mastering Euclid's Elements by the age of 12. At the age of 16 he formulated one of the basic theorems of projective geometry, known as Pascal's theorem and described in his Essai pour les coniques In 1647, a few years after publishing

33. Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) Excerpts from a mathematical biography by WW Rouse Ball. http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Pascal/RouseBall/RB_Pascal.html

Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) From `A Short Account of the History of Mathematics' (4th edition, 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball. Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises. Blaise Pascal Elements , a book which Pascal read with avidity and soon mastered. In 1650, when in the midst of these researches, Pascal suddenly abandoned his favourite pursuits to study religion, or, as he says in his , ``contemplate the greatness and the misery of man''; and about the same time he persuaded the younger of his two sisters to enter the Port Royal society. His famous Provincial Letters directed against the Jesuits, and his , were written towards the close of his life, and are the first example 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 was suffering from sleeplessness and toothache when the idea occurred to him, and to his surprise his teeth immediately ceased to ache. Regarding this as a divine intimation to proceed with the problem, he worked incessantly for eight days at it, and completed a tolerably full account of the geometry of the cycloid. I now proceed to consider his mathematical works in rather greater detail.

34. Blaise Pascal The fIFth chapter the learning module, The European Enlightenment, by Richard Hooker, is a short discussion of the main outlines of the thought of blaise http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/PASCAL.HTM

Enlightenment Reader John Milton Paradise Lost Book V Christianity Glossary Typology Blaise Pascal , a mathematician and sometime theologian. The universe in the seventeenth century had expanded beyond human imagination. The century before introduced Europe to an entirely new continent, filled with a people no one had ever heard of before, who had a history spanning centuries, a history that would forever remain a mystery to the Europeans. They looked at fallen cities in Meso-America and gazed on stone stelae and books filled with a mysterious and indecipherable language and realized a wealth of human history lay beyond their grasp. The invention of the telescope multiplied worlds upon worlds: the moon, which had always been regarded as a kind of atmosphere, was in fact terrestrial, with mountains and plains. The planet Jupiter was itself surrounded by planets, little earths that did not orbit our larger earth. If all these neighbors were terrestrial, what might the stars themselves have orbiting about them? For the first time in human history, people began to speculate about the possibility of other forms of life, particularly human life, living on other earths orbiting other suns (Milton, in Paradise Lost , implies that this is a possibility).

35. Inventor Of The Week: Archive pascal Mathematician and inventor blaise pascal was born in Clermont, France on June 29, 1623. His mother passed away when he and his two sisters were very http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/pascal.html

This Week Inventor Archive Inventor Search Inventor of the Week Archive Browse for a different Invention or Inventor Mechanical Calculator Mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont, France on June 29, 1623. His mother passed away when he and his two sisters were very young, and their father became solely responsible for their upbringing. He was a judge in Clermont, who moved the family to Paris in 1623, in part to further the education of his son, who was showing early potential for academic brilliance. In December of 1639, Pascal's father had moved the family to Rouen where he took a job as tax collector for the region. Pascal's invention of the mechanical calculator in 1641 was borne out of a desire to help his father in collecting taxes. He was the second person known to have created a device of this kind. A company by the name of Schickard had manufactured a type of mechanical calculator in 1624. Until 1645, Pascal worked on improvements to the machine, which was called the Pascaline. (It resembled the mechanical calculators of the 1940s.) The French money system presented Pascal with many technological challenges as there were, at the time, 20 sols in a livre and 12 deniers in a sol. This made his task much more difficult than it would have been if the system was based on factors of 100. Nevertheless, he was able to construct a machine that was reasonably accurate. The Pascaline could only add and subtract; multiplication and division was done using a series of additions and subtractions. The machine had eight movable dials that added up to eight figured long sums. Production of the machines started in 1642. Few machines were sold however, and manufacture ceased ten years later. Pascal worked on many versions of the devices, leading to his attempt to create a perpetual motion machine. He has been credited with introducing the roulette machine, which was a by-product of these experiments.

36. Mathematical Quotations -- P pascal, blaise (16231662). We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others. Pensees. http://math.furman.edu/~mwoodard/ascquotp.html

Mathematical Quotations P Back to MQS Home Page Back to "O" Quotations Forward to "Q" Quotations Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662) We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others. Pensees. 1670. It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. Pensees. 1670. Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed. Pensees. 1670. Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death. Pensees. 1670. Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way. W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms , New York: Viking Press, 1966. We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us from seeing it.

37. Biography Of Blaise Pascal | Christian Classics Ethereal Library Biography of blaise pascal. Biography Works By (1) Works About (3). blaise pascal French theologian, mathematician, and philosopher http://www.ccel.org/p/pascal

@import "/modules/simplenews/simplenews.css"; @import "/files/css/c6d86ca377e1ac74eded88739acb8e9e.css"; Home Browse Search Community ... CCEL Audiobook Biography of Blaise Pascal Biography Works By (1) Works About (3) Blaise Pascal - French theologian, mathematician, and philosopher User Account Login Register Distance Ed Degrees Risk-Free Trial ... Advertise with Us

38. Blaise Pascal Accomplishments blaise pascal Accomplishments Learn from this brilliant thinker. How did he view life, God, and existence? What was his conclusion on the truly important http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/blaise-pascal-accomplishments.htm

Blaise Pascal Accomplishments You are here: Philosophy Blaise Pascal Accomplishments Blaise Pascal Accomplishments Blaise Pascal was a brilliant scientist, mathematician, and philosopher born in 1623. Although he only lived to be 39, he created mathematical theorems that are still used today. He was known for his mastery of logic, reason, and probability, writing volumes of theory, rhetoric, and prose that remain foundational in contemporary education. Whether it was designing a mechanical calculator, discovering the properties of a vacuum, or debating the existence of God with the finest minds in Europe, Pascal was known as a truly special intellect. “What kind of freak is man? What a novelty he is, how absurd he is, how chaotic and what a mass of contradictions, and yet what a prodigy! He is judge of all things, yet a feeble worm. He is repository of truth, and yet sinks into such doubt and error. He is the glory and the scum of the universe!” Blaise Pascal Accomplishments – His Questions Although Pascal had a genius mind, he struggled with questions of the soul. Beginning with the unbearable loss of his mother to a mysterious illness when he was three, he later developed his own illness that sapped his life. Ultimately, Pascal’s intellect couldn’t provide all the answers. On November 23, 1654, Blaise Pascal was reading the 17th Chapter of John when he had a life-changing encounter with God. He wrote the following: From about half past ten at night to about half an hour after midnight

39. Probe Ministries - Blaise Pascal: An Apologist For Our Times Rick Wade examines the contemporary relevance of the apolegetics of blaise pascal, a seventeenth century mathematician,scientist, inventor, and Christian http://www.probe.org/content/view/807/77/

Home What's New About Us Popular Links Radio/Podcast Probe Resources Student Mind Games Contact Us Donate Articles Engaging the Culture Current Issues Reasons to Believe Cults and World Religions ... Probe Answers Our E-Mail Who's Online We have 19 guests online Home Theology and Philosophy Blaise Pascal: An Apologist for Our Times Blaise Pascal: An Apologist for Our Times Written by Rick Wade Introduction One of the tasks of Christian apologetics is to serve as a tool for evangelism. It is very easy, however, to stay in the realm of ideas and never confront unbelievers with the necessity of putting their faith in Christ. One apologist who was not guilty of this was Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century mathematician, scientist, inventor and Christian apologist. Christ and the need for redemption through Him were central to Pascal's apologetics. There was another feature of Pascal's thought that was, and remains, rare in apologetics: his understanding of the human condition as both created and fallen, and his use of that understanding as a point of contact with unbelievers. Peter Kreeft, a modern day Christian philosopher and apologist, says that Pascal is a man for

40. The Galileo Project L. Brunschvig, P. Boutroux, eds., Oeuvres de blaise pascal, 1, (Paris, 1923). B1900.A3B8 vol.1 J. Mesnard, pascal, his Life and Works, trans. http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/pascal_bla.html

Pascal, Blaise 1. Dates Born: Clermont-Ferrand, 19 June 1623 Died: Paris, 19 August 1662 Dateinfo: Dates Certain Lifespan: 2. Father Occupation: Government Official Pascal's ancestors were rich merchants that attained the highest ranks of the burgess class. His father, Etienne, was a royal tax officer and a member of the petit noblesse. Although there is no explicit word about the financial status of the father, that ancestry of rich merchants, together with all the circumstances of Pascal's life, seem clearly to state that he grew up in wealthy circumstances. 3. Nationality Birth: French Career: French Death: French 4. Education Schooling: No University Pascal appears to have had no formal education. As a young child his father took charge of his education. He continued his education in the salons and scientific gatherings he attended with his father as a young man in Paris. 5. Religion Affiliation: Catholic In 1646 he had his first conversion experience and was attracted to the teaching of Saint-Cyran whose views were close to Jansenism. Pascal kept his ties with the Port Royalists for the rest of his life. He even came to the aid of the Jansenists against the Jesuits. 6. Scientific Disciplines

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