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Ramanujan was focused to pass the First Arts examination, which would be his ticket to the University of Madras. Hence, he went to Pachaiyappa’s College in Madras in 1906 and put all his efforts in studying and attended all the lectures. Unfortunately, after three months of his dedicated study, he became ill. He appeared for the Fine Arts examination and cleared in mathematics, but failed in all the other subjects. This stopped him from pursuing his dream of getting into the University of Madras. He left college without a degree and pursued independent research in Mathematics.  In 1908, he studied fractions and divergent series. His health deteriorated and this time, it became worse and he had to undergo an operation in 1909. It took considerable time for him to recover. Ramanujan spent more time and effort in developing his mathematical ability and solved problems in the Journal of the ‘Indian Mathematical Society’, developing relations between elliptic modular equations. His brilliant work on the Bernoulli numbers in 1911, in the Journal of the Indian mathematical society, grabbed the recognition for all his hard work over the years. Though he did not have a University qualification, he became quite famous in Madras as a mathematical genius. He required means of income and so, he approached the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society in 1911. Hence, he was appointed in a temporary post at the accountant’s General Office in Madras. Afterwards, he also approached Ramachandra Rao, the Collector at Nellore, for a job. In 1912, Ramanujan applied at the Madras Port Trust in the section of accounts for the clerical post. Recommendations from the university mathematicians helped him to get through the selection process. Hence, he joined the office on 1 March 1912. In the office, he was surrounded with great mathematicians who enhanced Ramanujan’s knowledge in the subject.       Pascal always remained an influential mathematician throughout his life. His convenient tabular presentation of binomial coefficients described in his Traité du triangle arithmétique, released in 1653, later became famous as Pascal’s triangle. In 1654, following a friend,the Chevalier de Méré’s interest in gambling problem, Pascal discussed this subject with Fermat, which later led to the foundation of mathematical theory of probabilities. One of the gambling problems was of two players who wanted to finish a game early, and given the then condition of the game, wanted to share the stakes fairly, based on the fact that each player had equal chances of winning the match from that point. In this context, Pascal used a probabilistic argument also known as Pascal's wager. The work done by Pascal and Fermat later helped Leibniz formulate infinitesimal calculus. Pascal also made important contribution to the philosophy of mathematics with his works like De l'Esprit géométrique and De l'Art de persuader. Pascal contribution to the physical sciences includes his works in fields of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics which were mostly based on hydraulic principles. He also had the credit of inventing syringe and hydraulic press. Following the views of Galileo and Torricelli, he opposed the Aristotelian notion which says that a creation is a thing of substance, whether visible or invisible. He advocated the presence of vacuum in substances. He said that it is the vacuum which keeps the mercury floating in a barometer and even fills the space above the mercury in the tube. In his work in 1647, “Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide” he gave more experiments regarding his statement on vacuum. These experiments performed by Pascal were praised throughout the Europe and established his principle and also the value of barometer.   







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