The History of
the Binomial Coefficients in Europe
In Europe, there are many authors who can fairly
lay claim to having made a serious study of the binomial coefficients,
several of them long before Blaise Pascal was even born. Here is
a summary of the work that survives to this day, with some information
(or speculation) as to who knew of the work of previous authors when
they published, as well as a look into the work done by Pascal and a little
behind the scenes investigation on how things get named in math.