Pascal

Named after the French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal, Pascal is both the name of the physical measurement unit (the SI unit) for pressure and of the programming language Pascal.

Despite Blaise Pascal was known for the Pascal's Triangle, the triangle was described by Zhu Shijie in 1303 AD in his book Precious Mirror of the Four Elements. In his book, Zhu mentioned the triangle as an ancient method (over 200 years before his time) for solving binomial coefficients, which indicated that the method was known to Chinese mathematicians five centuries before Pascal.

This is a triangle with a specific pattern, formed with the binomial coefficients. A few rows of this famous triangle follows:

Row 0                    1
Row 1                   1 1
Row 2                  1 2 1
Row 3                 1 3 3 1
Row 4                1 4 6 4 1
Row 5              1 5 10 10 5 1
Row 6             1 6 15 20 15 6 1

As you can see, there is a pattern to this triangle. Each number equals the sum of the 2 numbers above it. There are an infinite amount of rows. If you color in all even numbers on this triangle and leave the odd numbers blank, you get the Sierpinski triangle. Try coloring in multiples of 3, 4, 5, and so on and see what patterns emerge!