PASCAL AND FEEMAT. 21 



conquered. The interest which attaches to the propositions is 

 increased by the uncertainty which subsists as to whether Fermat 

 himself had succeeded in demonstrating them. 



The French government in the time of Louis Philippe assigned 

 a grant of money for publishing a new edition of Format's works ; 

 but unfortunately the design has never been accomplished. The 

 edition which we have quoted in Art. 11 has been reprinted in 

 facsimile by Friedlander at Berlin in 1861. 



27. At the time when the Theory of Probability started from 

 the hands of Pascal and Fermat, they were the most distinguished 

 mathematicians of Europe. Descartes died in 1650, and Newton 

 and Leibnitz were as yet unknown ; Newton was born in 1642, 

 and Leibnitz in 1646. Huygens was born in 1629, and had 

 already given specimens of his powers and tokens of his future 

 eminence; but at this epoch he could not have been placed on the 

 level of Pascal and Fermat. In England Wall is, born in 1616, 

 and appointed Savilian j^rofessor of geometry at Oxford in 1649, 

 was steadily rising in reputation, while Barrow, born in 1630, was 

 not appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge 

 until 1663. 



It might have been anticipated that a subject interesting in. 

 itself and discussed by the two most distinguished mathematicians 

 of the time would have attracted rapid and general attention ; but 

 such does not appear to have been the case. The two great men 

 themselves seem to have been indifferent to any extensive publi- 

 cation of their investigations; it was sufficient for each to gain 

 the approbation of the other. Pascal finally withdrew from science 

 and the world ; Fermat devoted to mathematics only the leisure of 

 a laborious life, and died in 1665. 



The invention of the Differential Calculus by Newton and 

 Leibnitz soon offered to mathematicians a subject of absorbing 

 interest ; and we shall find that the Theory of Probability advanced 

 but little during the half century which followed the date of the 

 correspondence between Pascal and Fermat. 



