Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was educated at home by his father, a tax collector in Rouen, and published a treatise on conic sections at 16. In 1642 he began work on calculating machines now called Pascalines, making him one of the first inventors of the mechanical calculator. He corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, shaping modern economics and social science, and in 1647 rebutted Aristotle and Descartes by demonstrating that nature does not abhor a vacuum, clarifying concepts of pressure that now carry his name in the SI unit. In 1646 he and his sister Jacqueline turned toward Jansenism; after a religious experience in 1654 he wrote the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the latter containing Pascal's wager - a probabilistic argument for belief in God. He also wrote on the arithmetical triangle that year and on the cycloid between 1658 and 1659. Shortly before his death in Paris at 39, he established the carrosses à cinq sols, the first modern public transport service.