Blaise Pascal

Early work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jansenist, wrote on philosophy and theology, notably as collected in the posthumous Pensées (1670). This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his bel...