FERMAT AND PASCAL ON PROBABILITY

Italian writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, notably Pacioli (1494), Tartaglia (1556), and Cardan (1545), had discussed the problem of the division of a stake between two players whose game was interrupted before its close. The problem was proposed to Pascal and Fermat, probably in 1654, by the Chevalier de M´er´e, a gambler who is said to have had unusual ability “even for the mathematics.” The correspondence which ensued between Fermat and Pascal, was fundamental in the development of modern concepts of probability