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.