Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, scientist, inventor and Christian philosopher who made important contributions in a variety of disciplines in a comparatively short life.  The son of a judge who lost his mother at age three, he was a child prodigy extraordinarily gifted in mathematics and science. At age 16 he produced a treatise on conic sections  still known today as Pascal's theorem.  In his late teens he was pressed into service to assist his father, then tax collector in Rouen, and invented one of the first mechanical calculating machines to handle the heavy amounts of arithmetic. He went on to make important contributions to the understanding of hydraulic fluids, inventing the hydraulic press and syringe, and conducted experiments to prove the existence of vacuums, which had been considered a physical impossibility. His first serious engagement with theology was in 1646,  when physicians treating his father introduced him to the rigorous Augustinism of the Jansenist branch of the Catholicism. He experienced an intense religious vision in November, 1654 which led to his two major literary works: The Provincial Letters, a satirical attack on casuistry that was both highly popular and controversial, shredded and burned by order of the Louis XIV, and Pensées, a defense of Christianity that was published after his death.

Pascal, once described by T. S. Eliot as “ a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world” suffered from ill health for most of his adult life, and during his later years tried to avoid treatment, considering that “sickness is the natural state of Christians”.  He died at age thirty-nine.