
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


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
Michael Moriarty
Michela Massimi
Producer: Thomas Morris.
By BBC Radio 44.6
702702 ratings
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
Michael Moriarty
Michela Massimi
Producer: Thomas Morris.

7,608 Listeners

890 Listeners

1,048 Listeners

5,480 Listeners

1,798 Listeners

3,207 Listeners

1,880 Listeners

859 Listeners

613 Listeners

276 Listeners

1,756 Listeners

1,042 Listeners

2,098 Listeners

483 Listeners

414 Listeners

826 Listeners

237 Listeners

336 Listeners

351 Listeners

473 Listeners

3,159 Listeners

725 Listeners

1,637 Listeners