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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

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Melvyn Bragg

David Wootton

Michela Massimi

Michael Moriarty

Thomas Morris

In Our Time: Pascal

Pascal

19/09/2013

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Pascal

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French thinker Blaise Pascal.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

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. Although he died in his late thirties, Pascal left a formidable legacy as a scientist and pioneer of probability theory, and as one of seventeenth century Europe's greatest writers. 

With:

David Wootton
Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York

Michael Moriarty
Drapers Professor of French at the University of Cambridge

Michela Massimi
Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh.

Producer: Thomas Morris.

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