Pascal's Triangle

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Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a great mathematician from the 17th Century. He was born on June 19, 1623 in Clermont, France. His father’s name was Etienne. Etienne was a local judge at Clermont and like Pascal had an interest in science. His mother was Antoinette Begon who died when Pascal was only three. He had two sisters named Gilberte and Jacqueline.
At the age of eight, Pascal’s father moved his family to Paris to keep up his scientific studies and to carry on the education of Pascal who showed exceptional ability. He did not allow Pascal to work so he could concentrate on his studies. But Pascal at first was not allowed to study mathematics. He was confined to the study of languages.
When Pascal was twelve years old he got very curious about geometry so he asked his tutor in what geometry consisted. He was so interested about it that he used to give up his play time to this new study and in a few weeks had discovered for himself many properties of figures, and in particular the proposition that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. His father, surprised by this display of ability, gave him a copy of Euclid’s “Elements”. Pascal read the book and mastered it. This won him respect for his great talent in mathematics. So Pascal’s attention began to focus on analytical geometry and physics.
Pascal did not attend school and because of his interests in geometry at the age of fourteen Pascal was admitted to meetings of French geometricians. At the age of sixteen he wrote an essay on conic sections and at age eighteen, he constructed the first arithmetical machine. When he was nineteen years old, Pascal began to create a machine that would be similar to an everyday calculator to help his father with his accounting job. After that Pascal worked on many mathematical problems, including how gases and fluids behave.
In 1654, when Pascal was 31 he created “Pascal’s Triang...