GIROLAMO CARDANO (1501–1576)

Cardano , born in Pavia, Italy, was the illegitimate child of Fazio
Cardano, a lawyer, mathematician, and friend of Leonardo da Vinci, and Chiara Micheria, a young widow.
In spite of illness and poverty, Cardano was able to study at the universities of Pavia and Padua, from where
he received his medical degree. Cardano was not accepted into Milan’s College of Physicians because of his
illegitimate birth, as well as his eccentricity and confrontational style. Nevertheless, his medical skills were
highly regarded. One of his main accomplishments as a physician is the first description of typhoid fever.
Cardano published more than 100 books on a diverse range of subjects, including medicine, the natural
sciences,mathematics, gambling, physical inventions and experiments, and astrology.He alsowrote afascinating
autobiography. In mathematics, Cardano’s book

Ars Magna, published in 1545, established the foundations of
abstract algebra. This was the most comprehensive book on abstract algebra for more than a century; it presents many novel ideas of
Cardano and of others, including methods for solving cubic and quartic equations from their coefficients. Cardano also made several
important contributions to cryptography. Cardano was an advocate of education for the deaf, believing, unlike his contemporaries,
that deaf people could learn to read and write before learning to speak, and could use their minds just as well as hearing people.
Cardano was often short of money. However, he kept himself solvent through gambling and winning money by beating others
at chess. His book about games of chance,Liber de Ludo Aleae, written in 1526 (but published in 1663), offers the first systematic
treatment of probability; it also describes effective ways to cheat. Cardano was considered to be a man of dubious moral character;
he was often described as a liar, gambler, lecher, and heretic.