Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont in France in 1623; his mother died when he was three, and his father educated him himself. He was a rare genius: at sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections; at nineteen, to help his father, a tax official, with his calculations, he invented one of the first mechanical calculators; later he proved by experiment the existence of the vacuum and, with Fermat, laid the foundations of the theory of probability. Late on the night of 23 November 1654 he had an overwhelming religious experience, wrote down what he felt on a slip of paper and sewed it into the lining of his coat, carrying it with him for the rest of his life; it was found only after his death. Thereafter he turned to religious thought and planned a great defence of Christianity, but died at thirty-nine, leaving only a mass of notes.