Blaise Pascal. Pascal’s law. The Great Fluid Equilibrium Experiment
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand to the royal councilor of the financial and tax district of Auvergne, Etienne Pascal, and the daughter of a local judge, Antoinette Begon, who died when her son was only two and a half years old. Pascal’s family belonged to the judicial “nobility of the robe”. Pascal’s father, a widely educated intellectual, a gifted mathematician and a talented educator (in the spirit of Montaigne’s humanistic pedagogy), after the death of his wife devoted his life to his children (there were two more daughters in the family), who received an excellent home education (ancient Greek and Latin, grammar, mathematics, history, geography, etc.). From 1631 the family lived in Paris. Blaise grew up as a very sickly and brilliantly gifted child, who later demonstrated his gift first of all in mathematics and physics, then in invention, then in polemical writings, theology and, finally, in philosophy. Everywhere his genius left a bright and unique mark.