Pascal : In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name. His contributions on probability and discrete mathematics have helped me add quite a lot of marks in my kitty during my 4 yrs of CS engineering ;)
Today, while i was watching a quizz show called Grand Master in one of the malayalam channels, 'Asianet'. The quizz master asked a question which none of the teams were able to answer. Let me get the question for you : Wich famous person quoted the following : "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
The quote really got my attention because i felt i completely agreed with it, whoever quoted it. Then came the answer from the quizz master : Its from "Blaise Pascal".
Wow, i couldn't believe it. So, as usual i opened my lappy, and googled it.
I did find some interesting things on the life of Pascal which i had never tried to know even after having heard his name from my 5th grade.
"For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed."
Blaise Pascal, Pensées #72
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