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A latin poem written in the 13th century that has the first calculations of throwing 3 dice and gambling probabilities. -
Not even 19 years old yet, Pascal invents a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction for his father called the "Pascaline." -
Pascal and Fermat propose the coin dilemma, which goes as such:
Two men are betting on a series of coin flips.
The men agree that the first to win 6 such flips will be awarded 100 coins.
The game, however, is interrupted after only 8 flips, with the first man leading 5 to 3.
How should the pot of money be divided?
Through this, they were able to formulate the expected value theory. -
Pascal was in Paris, France driving by the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge in a carriage when the 2 horses in front had jumped over the low wall suddenly. This led to him experiencing an intense vision about God which later spurred him to devoting more time to philosophy, theology, and mathematics. -
One of his major contributions to the philosophy of mathematics, Pascal writes, "On The Geometrical Spirit," as a preface to a geometry textbook. This didn't get published until decades after his death. -
He invented the first microscope in 1668, which was the first time we were able to visualize microscopic organisms. He is known as the Father of Microbiology, -
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Using a series of experiments with virulent, non-virulent, and heat killed virulent strains of bacteria injected into mice, Frederick Griffith was able to find that chemical substances from one cells can genetically transform another cell -
Building off of the Griffith experiment, they hypothesized the genetic material being transferred was either protein or nucleic acid (DNA or RNA). They concluded that DNA was the genetic material, but their findings weren't taken seriously until the Hershey-Chase experiments. -
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Using a series of experiments with radioactively labeled protein vs. DNA, they were able to solidify the Avery-Macleod-McCarty experiment that DNA was the genetic material being passed. -
Watson and Crick used x-ray crystallography imaging from Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins to discover that DNA was in the shape of a double helix. This is the first image of the genetic material that is passed from organism to organism. -
