Because maybe, just maybe...
Blaise Pascal was a late-Renaissance Renaissance man. There was that brief stint as a tax collector, but he otherwise seems to have led a life of broad achievement.
He is credited with advancing our understanding of geometry. He studied the nature of fluids and in the process invented the hydraulic press and the syringe. His experiments with barometers definitively proved that, pace Aristotle, nature is perfectly comfortable with vacuums.
Most of the references I visited made note of the fact that many of his discoveries and theories were made before he reached the age of sixteen without revealing which of his contributions were prodigious and which were merely the ho-hum expressions of an adult genius.