Meet Blaise Pascal - a very busy Inventor! | One Stop Science Shop

Meet Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and a Christian philosopher. Amongst his many inventions is the syringe, which means you now know who to blame the next time you go, oh, when you're being vaccinated. Pascal was born in 1623 in Clermont-Ferre in France. Tragically for him, his mother died when he was three. His father then devoted his life to educating his children. Pascal was a child prodigy, showing an incredible aptitude for science and mathematics. At the age of only 16, he discovered a new geometrical theorem. His work was so precocious that renowned scholars such as Descartes were convinced that Pascal's father was the true author. By the age of 19, Pascal had started his pioneering work on calculating machines. He designed the first mechanical calculator to help his father, In the years that followed, he built many more versions of these calculating machines, which became known as Pascalines in his honor. Pascal was also a trailblazer in the physical sciences. His work on fluids yielded Pascal's law, which states that pressure exerted anywhere on a fluid is transmitted equally in all directions throughout the fluid. He demonstrated this hydrostatic principle by attaching a thin vertical tube into a barrel full of water and filling the tube with water up to the height of the third floor of a building. The pressure from the water in the vertical tube caused the barrel to leak and then burst, in what became known as Pascal's barrel experiment. In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the standard unit of pressure, to a computer programming language, Pascal's triangle, and Pascal's law. He died at the relatively young age of 39 in 1662, devoting the later part of his life to philosophy and religion. Pascal also contributed early work to the mathematical principles of probability theory. This studies things like uncertainty, risk, and decision making. It can be said with little risk and no uncertainty that Blaise Pascal's inventions and discoveries have been instrumental to humanity's scientific development.