Blaise Pascal

             Blaise Pascal was born on June, 19 1623 at Clermont in Auvergne. His father Etienne, was a successful lawyer doing well in his profession. Three years after Pascal's birth, Etienne lost his wife Antoinette, and found himself responsible for three children, Gilberte, Jacqueline and Blaise who was a sickly child. It seems as though growing up without his mother condemned him to bad health and his development permanently. His father insisted on educating him at home, because he did not want his son to he mistreated in school. Etienne was an accomplished mathematician, lawyer, and thought probably that he could teach his son as well as a schoolteacher.
             From 1631 until 1640, when Pascal's family moved to Rouen, he pursued a course of education under his father's supervision which gave him the opportunity to master, Latin, Greek, mathematics and science. It was in Rouen where Blaise soon began the career for which his education had prepared him. In 1640 he published a little treatise on projective geometry. In 1642 he invented a calculating machine called the machine arithmetique which is on display in Clermont-Ferrand, where Pascal was born. Today's computer is designed on the same essential lines as the mechanical calculator. By 1644 a Rouen craftsman under his supervision had actually built the first of a small number of machines, all of which worked. By 1646 he had begun to work on the problem of the vacuum, which was to win him public renown. "Pascal's law", or Pascal's principle, in fluid mechanics, the principle that in a fluid at rest in a closed container, a pressure change in one part of the fluid is transmitted without loss to every portion of the fluid and to the walls of the container. He also discovered the principle that the pressure at a point in a fluid at rest is the same in all directions.
             Of his mathematical works, the most solid is to do with what is now call
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Blaise Pascal. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 13:56, April 25, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/155.html