Probability has an amazing history. A practical gambling problem faced by the French nobleman Chevalier de Méré sparked the idea of probability in the mind of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the famous French mathematician. Pascal's correspondence with Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665), another French Mathematician in the form of seven letters in 1654 is regarded as the genesis of probability. Early mathematicians like Jakob Bernoulli (1654-1705), Abraham de Moivre (1667-1754), Thomas Bayes (1702-1761) and Pierre Simon De Laplace (1749-1827) contributed to the development of probability. Laplace's Théorie Analytique des Probabilités gave comprehensive tools to calculate probabilities based on the principles of permutations and combinations. Laplace also said, "Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation."
Later mathematicians like Chebyshev (1821-1894), Markov (1856-1922), von Mises (1883-1953), Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) and Kolmogorov (1903-1987) contributed to new developments. Over the last four centuries and a half, probability has grown to be one of the most essential mathematical tools applied in diverse fields like economics, commerce, physical sciences, biological sciences and engineering. It is particularly important for solving practical electrical-engineering problems in communication, signal processing and computers.
Notwithstanding the above developments, a precise definition of probability eluded the mathematicians for centuries. Kolmogorov in 1933 gave the axiomatic definition of probability and resolved the problem.