Cardano, Girolamo, also called Jerome Cardan or Hieronymus Cardanus 1501-76
Italian mathematician, naturalist, physician, philosopher, gambler and astrologer

Born in Pavia, he became famous as a physician and teacher of mathematics in Milan and became Professor of Medicine at Pavia (1543) and Bologna (1562). In 1551 he visited Scotland to treat the archbishop of St Andrews and in London cast the horoscope of Edward VI. In 1570 he was imprisoned by the Inquisition for heresy, recanted and went to Rome in 1571 where he was given a pension by Pope Pius V. He died a few weeks after finishing his candid autobiography De propria vita (Eng trans, Book of My Life, 1930). A strange mixture of polymath and charlatan, he wrote over 200 treatises on, among other things, physics, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, philosophy, music and medicine. His most famous work is his treatise on algebra, the Ars Magna ('The Great Skill'), in which the formulae for solving cubic and quartic equations were published for the first time. He was accused of plagiarism by Niccol� Tartaglia who claimed the solution of the cubic as his own, but the credit should perhaps go to Scipione da Ferro. Despite this the solution is still known as Cardano's formula.

Bibliography: Oystein Ore, The Gambling Scholar (1953)