Tech Professionals
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal lived in 17th century France and made several contributions to the fields of mathematics, physics, and philosophy. He is known for laying the foundation for today's probability theory, for his work in barometric pressure, and for his theological writings. Blaise Pascal made contributions to mathematics, physics, and philosophy. In mathematics, you might recognize his name in Pascal's triangle. The numbers that form Pascal's triangle are binomial coefficients. Each number is the sum of the two numbers above it. The tip of the triangle and the sides are all ones. The numbers forming the body of the triangle are the addition of the two immediately above. For example, the middle number in the third row is the addition of the two numbers from the second row. Pascal presented this information in written form in 1653. A year later, Pascal laid the foundation for probability theory. He was inspired by his desire to help a friend who had some questions about gambling. He realized that events don't happen randomly, but actually depend on what happened just before the event. In other words, if you had a box of blue and red balls, and you had already taken a blue ball out, the probability of taking a red ball out now will have changed. In 1646, Blaise Pascal experimented with atmospheric pressure and discovered that vacuums exist in the real world. He also found that atmospheric pressure can be measured using real weights. After a conversion experience, Blaise Pascal fully converted to Jansenism and wrote the Provincial Letters in which he defended Jansenism and its leading philosopher against the Jesuits. Pascal's Inventions In the year 1642, at just 18 years old, Pascal invented a calculator to help out his father. This calculator was called the Pascaline and had a wheel with eight movable parts for dialing. Each part corresponded to a particular digit in a number. For example, the number 368 would be dialed in three parts with a three, six, and eight, respectively for the hundreds, tens, and ones position. The Pascaline could add, subtract, multiply, and even divide. This was an early form of the now standard digital calculator.
Admiral Grace M. Hopper
Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 - January 1, 1992), née Grace Brewster Murray, was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral.[1] She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer in 1944,[2] invented the first compiler for a computer programming language,[3][4][5][6][7] and was one of those who popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches (in one instance, removing a moth from a computer[8]).
John Horton Conway
John Horton Conway (born December 26, 1937, Liverpool, England) is a prolific mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He has also contributed to many branches of recreational mathematics, notably the invention of the Game of Life, and was the leader of the JHC group. Conway is currently professor of mathematics at Princeton University. He studied at Cambridge, where he started research under Harold Davenport. He has an Erdős number of one. He received the Berwick Prize (1971), was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (1981), and was the first recipient of the Pólya Prize (LMS) (1987).