Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher and Catholic writer, born in 1623 at Clermont-Ferrand and educated by his father Etienne Pascal. He made important contributions to the study of fluids and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. In 1647 he rebutted those who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum, and he wrote Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide on the subject. His work on hydrostatics centred on hydraulic fluids, and his inventions include the hydraulic press, which uses hydraulic pressure to multiply force, and the syringe. The SI unit of pressure and Pascal's law of hydrostatics carry his name. He also built early mechanical calculators and died in Paris in 1662 at the age of 39.