P ascal, B laise (1623–1662)

Abstract A mathematician, physicist, and Christian apologist, famous for his scientific work as well as philosophical and religious ideas, such as “Pascal's Wager,” Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont‐Ferrand, France. His mother died when he was young, whereupon his father, a tax lawyer and prominent mathematician, moved to Paris to raise Pascal and his two sisters. Despite lifelong ill health, Pascal was a scientific prodigy, composing an original treatise on conic sections around the age of 17. A few years later he constructed a machine to help his father in his tax computations; the device is regarded as the first digital calculator and an important step in the development of computers (the modern computer language Pascal commemorates him and his achievements). Other scientific achievements included work on barometrics and hydrodynamics that led to the discovery of several physical laws, the invention of the syringe and hydraulic press, and also mathematical work on probability and the rudiments of calculus.