Willem Jacob 's Gravesande

Willem Jacob 's Gravesande was born at Bois-le-Duc on 27 September 1688, the son of Dirk Storm van’s Gravesande, sheriff and councilor of the city of ‘s Hertogenbosch and steward of the lands of William II, King of England and later of Prince William IV.

On his mother’s side, ‘s Gravesande was descended from the Leiden professor Johannes Heurnius. Educated at home, ‘s Gravesande entered the University of Leiden in 1704, at the age of sixteen in order to study law.

He published at the age of 18 an essay on perspective, which was applauded by Bernoulli. He obtained his doctorate in Jurisprudence in 1707, with a dissertation on suicide and for a decade practiced Law in The Hague.

In 1717, ‘s Gravesande was appointed professor of astronomy and mathematics at Leiden. He taught the Newtonian system. His inaugural lecture was entitled On Mathematics in all the Sciences, especially in physics, and also about the Perfection of Astronomy to be Derived from Physics.

His philosophical writings are marked by the precision to which mathematical studies had habituated him; but being unable to decide between the doctrine of Locke, Descartes and Leibnitz, he borrowed ideas from each. He was the first to introduce the theories of Newton upon the continent.

He remained at Leiden until his death, adding the professorship of cavil and military architecture in 1730, and finally becoming professor of philosophy in 1734.

‘s Gravesande was a generalist who made few original contribution to science, yet he was perhaps the most famous scientist in Europe.
Willem Jacob 's Gravesande

Short biography of Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a gifted mathematician. He (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was born in a middle class French family. His father was a lawyer.

His mother dead early in 1632 and he was left to be with his father and his sister. They family moved to Paris, where Pascal was educated by his father, showing precocious aptitude in science, mathematics and Latin.

When he was only 17, he wrote an essay on geometry that as world class. He founded the whole science of probabilities.

He followed his father back to provincial France in 1640, when the family settled in Rouen, and remained there for the next seven years.

Pascal did not remain idle, inspired by a desire to help his father with the time consuming mathematical calculations, Pascal invented the first mechanical calculation machine in 1642.

Pascal was the inventor of the barometer. He studied the region above the mercury, insisting that it was a vacuum.

After convincing his brother in-law to climb a mountain in France, he concluded that the height of the mercury in the thermometer dropped as the mountain was scaled, indicating that pressure decreases with altitude.

In 1647, Pascal published his Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide; this was the summary of a series of experiments he conducted with Pierre Petit, using variously sized and shaped tube and different liquids.

He made significant contributions to mathematics, especially in the fields of geometry, number theory and probability theory and he also helped to describe the ‘esprit geometrique’ which characterized the new science of the 1650s.

Pascal had suffered from life-long ill-health and died at the age of 39 in Paris.
Short biography of Blaise Pascal