Editing Blaise Pascal (section)

=== Move to Paris ===
In 1631, five years after the death of his wife,<ref name="MCS">{{cite web |last1=O'Connor |first1=J.J. |last2=Robertson |first2=E.F. |author-link1=John J. O'Connor (mathematician) |author-link2=Edmund F. Robertson |title=Étienne Pascal |url=http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pascal_Etienne.html |date=August 2006 |publisher=[[University of St Andrews|University of St. Andrews, Scotland]] |access-date=5 February 2010 |archive-date=19 April 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100419181846/http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pascal_Etienne.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Étienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became a key member of the family. Étienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children.

The young Pascal showed an extraordinary intellectual ability, with an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-04-08 |title=Blaise Pascal {{!}} Biography, Facts, & Inventions {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Blaise-Pascal |access-date=2024-04-19 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref>  Etienne had tried to keep his son from learning mathematics; but by the age of 12, Pascal had rediscovered, on his own, using charcoal on a tile floor,  [[Euclid]]’s first thirty-two geometric propositions, and was thus given a copy of Euclid's [[Euclid's Elements|''Elements'']].<ref>Cole, J. R. (1995). Pascal : the man and his two loves. United Kingdom: NYU Press. p. 40</ref>

==== ''Essay on Conics'' ====
Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of [[Gérard Desargues|Desargues]] on [[conic section]]s. Following Desargues' thinking, the 16-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the ''Mystic [[Hexagram]]'', ''Essai pour les coniques'' (''Essay on Conics'') and sent it — his first serious work of mathematics — to [[Marin Mersenne|Père Mersenne]] in Paris; it is known still today as [[Pascal's theorem]]. It states that if a [[hexagon]] is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).

Pascal's work was so precocious that [[René Descartes]] was convinced that Pascal's father had written it. When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son and not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a 16-year-old child."<ref>''[[The Story of Civilization]]: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV"'' by [[Will Durant|Will & Ariel Durant]]; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p. 56</ref>