Blaise Pascal Biography

Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623, in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne region, France and died on August 19, 1662, in Paris. His father was Étienne Pascal, Judge vice-president of tax collection and mathematician, while his mother, Antoinette Begon, belonged to a bourgeois family of merchants who aspired to the Noblesse of the robe.

Pascal was a polymath who made great contributions in mathematics and physics, as well as in Christian philosophy and writing. His main contributions were the design and construction of mechanical calculators, research on fluids, contributions to the theory of probability and the clarification of the concepts of emptiness and pressure.

Blaise Pascal was the only man of the four children of Étienne and Antoinette. His sisters were: Antonia, the older sister who died few days after birth, Gilberte the second and Jacqueline the last, after giving birth to her, their mother, Antoinette failed to recover and died. The education of the children was carried out by Étienne after being widowed. Between 1630 and 1631, Étienne moved with the children to Paris in order to give Blaise greater opportunities for education and for the development of his abilities.

At an early age, Blaise Pascal shows great intelligence, so his father decided that Blaise should start studying mathematics and geometry in the circle of Mersenne. In this place, around 1640, he would publish his first essay on the waves of the sound of bodies in motion. The genius of Blaise was more than foreseen by his father because he demonstrated skills for writing poetry, interest in physics and music, as well as learning languages ​​such as Latin and Greek.

“The one who doubts and does not investigate becomes not only unhappy but also unjust.” Blaise Pascal

In 1642, Blaise himself would build one of the first versions of a calculator, which is known as Pascal’s calculator. Initially, this artifact was only able to make sums, but over 10 years modifications were made by its creator, adding the ability to perform subtractions. After patenting it, he tried to sell it through a small company of his property. However, it was not very successful because the machines were difficult to build, besides very expensive. Out of the fifty calculators that were built at that time, only nine are preserved.

At the end of 1639, the Pascal family moved to Rouen. The reason: the new position assigned to his father as tax collector of Normandy. In this place, Blaise and Jacqueline would meet the playwright Pierre Corneille, who supported the literary talents of both children.

Around 1646, Pascal radically changes their religious customs, joining Jansenism, characterized by a greater rigor in morality. By then, Blaise suffered from paralysis in his legs, which he interpreted as a divine sign to lead an ascetic life. Although his religious devotion was great, it did not prevent him from devoting a good amount of time to his mathematical studies. In that same year, he would make his first approaches to the concept of emptiness proposed by Evangelista Torricelli and the following year he would publish Traité sur le vide (the treatise on emptiness).

On May of 1647, Blaise returned to reside in Paris in the company of his sister Jacqueline. Unfortunately, his ideas in this year were not well received by theologians and researchers, among them Descartes

. The fact that provoked a change in his proposals, formulating speculations in a more indirect way regarding the emptiness and the ether. In 1648, he presented the dependence of atmospheric pressure with the height of a place and published a treatise on which the law of communicating vessels is based on, which explains that in a set of containers connected to each other in the lower part, a liquid in rest will reach the same level.

After his father died, in 1651, Blaise depended exclusively on himself. In this year, he would begin to establish relations with the Parisian society, especially with the Duke of Roannez, who took him on a trip in 1652 with some freethinkers, allowing him to enter modern philosophy. Also, in this circle of friends discussed the ways to win in games of probability, a fact that led him to be interested in 1653 by the theory of probability.

“Pascal, whom I almost love, because he has taught me infinite things: the only logical Christian.” Friedrich Nietzsche

After a supposed carriage accident in 1654, Blaise experienced a vision in which Christianity is pointed out as a true path to follow, so he converts to this religion. Days later, he would stop frequenting the Parisian society, focusing on his new devotion and mathematics, publishing the treatises on the arithmetic triangle and numerical orders, principles of integral calculus and combinatorial analysis.

At that time, the only human relationships that he held for this moment were exclusively dialogues with the sages and theologians established at the Port-Royal des Champs convent, from the extensive experience, Pascal would begin to write his Pensées (The Thoughts). During 1656, Pascal started to publish religious and theological texts, while researching a new method to learn to read, grouping letters in syllables. Also this year, due to a strong anti-Jesuit polemic, he published Provincial Letters, in which he criticized and ridiculed the tendencies for the search for earthly power. These letters were compiled in a book and have been taken as great works in French prose.

Between 1656 and 1658, he published The Art of Persuasion, Apology for the Christian Religion and The Treatise on the busts of the Circular Quadrants, which served as the basis for the development of the infinitesimal calculus, as well as undertaking the writing of an inconclusive project known as writings on Grace.

Pascal’s health was always an impediment since it was in a constant decline. However, since 1659, his condition worsened, weakening him rapidly. In 1661, his sister Jacqueline died, and a year later, a serious illness would end his life.

Due to his early death, many writings in which Pascal worked were inconclusive, but this was not an impediment for his friends and relatives who wanted to make them known. Among the posthumously published texts, there are Thoughts on Religion, in which Christendom is defended before atheists and skeptics, as well as deep reflections on what is a human being.