VI.7 Girolamo Cardano

b. Pavia, Italy, 1501; d. Rome, 1576

Teacher of mathematics, Milan (1534–43); Professor of Medicine: Pavia (1543–60), Bologna (1562–70); imprisoned for heresy (1570–71)


Cardano’s great treatise, the Ars Magna (1545), laid the foundations for European algebra and remained the most comprehensive and systematic work on algebra for more than a century after it was published. It contained many new ideas, including methods (not all Cardano’s own) for solving cubic and quartic equations, all written without mathematical notation. Cardano’s own great insight was to recognize the existence of relations between the roots and the coefficients of an equation; in this he was unprecedented. He also showed a greater readiness than most of his contemporaries to contemplate the square roots of negative numbers. He is remembered today for “Cardano’s rule” for solving cubic equations of the form x3 + cx = d, where c and d are positive (he was unable to solve the casus irreducibilis, the case when c is negative).

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