Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and theologian. He was born in Clermont in Auvergne, the son of a minor noble who was a government official. Pascal's mother died in 1626. In 1631 the family moved to Paris but fled in 1638 because of the father's opposition to the fiscal regulations of Richelieu. The next year Pascal's younger sister, Jacqueline, successfully acted in a children's play performed for Richelieu and thus gained a pardon for her father, who then became the royal tax commissioner at Rouen.

Mathematics and Physics

Pascal was a prodigy, privately educated by his father, who was an excellent mathematician. His father wanted his son to have a good humanistic background before he learned mathematics and science, but at the age of twelve, Pascal discovered by himself the principles of geometry. When his father realized this, he abandoned his original plan...