Mathematician Pascal: Man is a thinking reed

Speaking of Pascal, you may not be familiar with it. But speaking of the unit of pressure, Pa, do you have any impressions?

Pascal can be said to be the "father of Pas" - he proposed a law on liquid pressure, which is later called Pascal's law; he designed and built the world's first digital calculator, the first mercury barometer; he invented the syringe on the basis of Pascal's law and created the hydraulic press; the intuitive principles he established had an impact on some later philosophers, such as Rousseau and Bergson...

Born in Auvergne, France, Pascal was intellectually superior from an early age and fell in love with mathematics at the age of 12. His father was a respected mathematician, and under his careful education, Pascal was proficient in Euclid geometry at a very young age, and he independently discovered the first 32 theorems of Euclid, and the order was completely correct; at the age of 12, he discovered "the inner angle of a triangle and is equal to 180 degrees" and began to study mathematics with his father; at the age of 16 he joined the Group of Mathematicians and Physicists in Paris (the predecessor of the French Academy of Sciences); at the age of 17 he wrote a highly mathematical essay "The Theory of Cones and Truncations", This was the result of his study of DeZarger's classic work on synthetic projective geometry. Descartes firmly did not believe that a 16-year-old could write such a book, and Pascal in turn did not recognize the value of Descartes' analytic geometry.

In 1642, at the age of 19, Pascal designed and built the world's first mechanical computing device, a computer that used gears to add and subtract. Originally just to help his father calculate the tax use, which was his brain to reduce the burden of his father's calculation, but it became famous at that time, it became the prototype of the later computer. After the successful development of the addition machine, Pascal believed that some of the thinking processes of human beings are no different from mechanical processes, so it is conceivable to use machinery to simulate human thinking activities.

Before 1646, the Pascal family was Catholic. Because of his father's illness, he came into contact with a more esoteric way of religious belief, which had a great impact on his later life. Pascal corresponds with the mathematician Fermat, and together they solve a problem sent by a high-society gambler and amateur philosopher who can't figure out why he always loses money when he throws three dice in a certain combination. In the process of solving this problem, they laid the foundation of modern probability theory. He made many contributions during his short life, with the greatest contribution in mathematics and physics.

In 1646, in order to test the theories of the Italian physicists Galileo Galilei and Torricelli, Pascal made a mercury barometer, and repeatedly conducted atmospheric pressure experiments on the top of the hill of Clermont-Ferrand, which overlooked Paris, paving the way for the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics. In order to improve Torricelli's barometer, he invented the syringe on the basis of Pascal's law and created the hydraulic press. His research and writings on the vacuum problem further enhanced his prestige. From an early age, he was physically weak and plagued by overwork. However, it was between 1651 and 1654 that he worked intensively on science between 1651 and 1654, writing several papers on the balance of liquids, the weight and density of air, and arithmetic triangles, the latter of which became the basis of probability theory. He also wrote many religious works between 1655 and 1659. In his later years, it was suggested that he publish the results of his research on the spiral line, and he immersed himself in scientific interest, but from February 1659 onwards, his illness worsened, leaving him unable to work properly and content with a devotional religious life. In the end, he died in great pain.

Pascal left an extremely valuable spiritual treasure. In his philosophical masterpiece, The Book of Thoughts, Pascal famously left the world with a famous saying: "Man is just a reed, the most fragile thing in nature, but he is a reed with thought." Remembering Pascal's exploits, the International System of Units defined the unit of "pressure" as "Pascal" because he was the first to propose the "Pascal's Law" that describes the properties of liquid pressure. The computer field will not forget Pascal's contribution, the PASCAL language, which was introduced in 1971, is also to commemorate this pioneer and make Pascal's english name remain in the computer age. Pascal's contributions to mathematics were also outstanding. In 1639, he proposed a theorem in a brilliant mathematical treatise, "On conic curves", which was later called Pascal's theorem. He also proposed the famous Pascal triangle, which elucidated the coefficient law of binomial expansion in algebra. (Tian Yi)