1654Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented
Pascal, Fermat, and the Mathematics of Chance
On the timeline · around 1654 · The Modern Age
What happened
Asked how to divide the stakes of an interrupted gambling game, the French mathematicians Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat worked out the answer in a famous 1654 exchange of letters — and in doing so laid the foundations of probability theory, a rigorous mathematics of uncertainty where none had existed before.
Why it matters
Probability turned chance itself into something that could be calculated. It grew into the mathematical backbone of statistics, insurance, physics, and risk — the tools with which the modern world measures the unknown.
Sources
Related timelines
- History of Money → — Probability underlies insurance and modern finance