Pascal (In Our Time)
1656 · Resource
Melvyn Bragg and his guests begin a new series of the programme with a discussion of the French polymath Blaise Pascal. Born in 1623, Pascal was a brilliant mathematician and scientist, inventing one of the first mechanical calculators and making important discoveries about fluids and vacuums while still a young man. In his thirties he experienced a religious conversion, after which he devoted most of his attention to philosophy and theology.
On these timelines: In Our Time (BBC podcast), Resources: Combined
Around 1656
- Age of Enlightenment (1685)
- Great Plague of London (1665)
- Salem witch trials (1692)
- English Civil War (1642)
- Glorious Revolution (1688)
- Siege of Vienna (1683) (1683)
- Reign of Peter the Great (1682)
- Thirty Years' War (1618)
- Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687)
- Qing dynasty (1644)