Girolamo cardano wife beater
Who Murdered Ferrari?! And Why?!
Gabrielle Birchak/May 17, /Modern History, Post Classical
When I last signed off, it was , and Tartaglia had won the Tartaglia-Fiore mathematical duel. Tartaglia was a rock star on the mathematical scene. He had solved all Fiore’s problems and was also able to find a solution for the cubic equation x=ax+b.
However, before I begin my story, I want to backtrack to the late fifteenth century, around , when a man named Bartolomeo Ferrari had two sons, Vincent and Alexander. Alexander had two children: a daughter named Maddalena and a son named Lodovico, who was born in Sadly, like Tartaglia, Lodovico and Maddalena became orphaned when their father was killed. As a result, Lodovico was raised by his uncle Vincent and grew up with his cousin Luca. Luca was a troublemaker and was written into history as a difficult young man. Luca likely felt equally challenged by his father. So, he ran away from home. Luca thus found himself in Milan, looking for work. Eventually, he landed a position working as a servant for the year-old mathematician Girolamo Cardano.
Cardano was an intelligent mathematician with a hot temper. He was born an illegitimate child in in Pavia. At that time, Pavia was in the Duchy of Milan, which means it was French territory. I mentioned this in my last article about Tartaglia, where I talked about the war in the northern part of Italy when France’s King Louis XII was the Duke of Milan.
Girolamo’s father was Fazio Cardano, a lawyer in Milan. He was also a brilliant mathematician. Fazio taught geometry at the University of Pavia and the Piatti Foundation in Milan. Fazio was so knowledgeable about geometry that Leonardo da Vinci had reached out to him for explanations on proportions and geometry. Possibly, this was when he and Pacioli were working on Pacioli’s book De Divina Proportione. So c
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“I prefer solitude to companions, since there are so few men who are trustworthy, and almost none truly learned. I do not say this because I demand scholarship in all men -- although the sum total of men's learning is small enough; but I question whether we should allow anyone to waste our time. The wasting of time is an abomination.”
- Girolamo Cardano ( - )
Golden words from Girolamo Cardano. A forgotten hero, the father of Probability, and Complex Numbers deserve our attention and gratitude. This is my attempt to weave an interesting story on his life while trying to uncover his mathematical genius without ignoring the struggles and achievements in his life.
Girolamo Cardano was the illegitimate child of Fazio Cardano and Chiara Micheria. His father was a lawyer in Milan but his expertise in mathematics was such that he was consulted by Leonardo da Vinci on questions of geometry. In addition to his law practice, Fazio lectured on geometry at the University of Pavia. When he was in his fifties, Fazio met Chiara Micheria, who was a young widow in her thirties, struggling to raise three children.
Chiara became pregnant but, before she was due to give birth, the plague hit Milan and she was persuaded to leave the city for the relative safety of nearby Pavia to stay with wealthy friends of Fazio. Thus Cardano was born in Pavia but his mother's joy was short lived when she received news that her first three children had died of the plague in Milan. Chiara lived apart from Fazio for many years but, later in life, they did marry.
Cardano at first became his father's assistant but he was a sickly child and Fazio had to get help from two nephews when the work became too much for Cardano. However, Cardano began to wish for greater things than an assistant to his father. Fazio had taught his son mathematics and Cardano began to think of an academic car Cardano's reputation as a physician began to spread throughout Europe, and he turned down numerous offers to work in royal courts as a medical professional. He did go to Scotland during the s to treat the Archbishop of St. Andrews, ultimately curing his illness. Cardano later returned to his professorship in Pavia, where his world fell apart in Cardano's eldest son, Giovanni Battista, faced an accusation of poisoning his wife, Brandonia Seroni, a woman Cardano had called "worthless, shameless." Brandonia and Giovanni Battista, AKA Giambattista, had married suddenly in , and he moved in with her family. It's not entirely clear what happened next, but Giambattista either found out about Seroni's infidelity - meaning perhaps his children were not his biological kin - or the couple simply quarreled. Shortly after Seroni gave birth in , someone accused Giambattista of poisoning his wife. He admitted to the crime, having given her cake laced with arsenic, and received an execution sentence after first being ordered to make amends to his late wife's family. He endured physical abuse while in prison and ultimately lost his left hand. An executioner beheaded Giambattista on April 13, Cardano reportedly never recovered from feeling like he had failed his son. As the father of a convicted killer, Cardano's reputation plummeted, and he left Milan for Bologna.Quick Info
Pavia, Duchy of Milan (now Italy)
Rome (now Italy) Biography
Girolamo or Hieronimo Cardano's name was Hieronymus Cardanus in Latin and he is sometimes known by the English version of his name Jerome Cardan.
Girolamo Cardano was the illegitimate child of Fazio Cardano and Chiara Micheria. His father was a lawyer in Milan but his expertise in mathematics was such that he was consulted by Leonardo da Vinci on questions of geometry. In addition to his law practice, Fazio lectured on geometry, both at the University of Pavia and, for a longer spell, at the Piatti foundation in Milan. When he was in his fifties, Fazio met Chiara Micheria, who was a young widow in her thirties, struggling to raise three children.
Chiara became pregnant but, before she was due to give birth, the plague hit Milan and she was persuaded to leave the city for the relative safety of nearby Pavia to stay with wealthy friends of Fazio. Thus Cardan was born in Pavia but his mother's joy was short lived when she received news that her first three children had died of the plague in Milan. Chiara lived apart from Fazio for many years but, later in life, they did marry.
Cardan at first became his father's assistant but he was a sickly child and Fazio had to get help from two nephews when the work became too much for Cardan. However, Cardan began to wish for greater things than an assistant to his father. Fazio had taught his son mathematics and Cardan began to think of an academic career. After an argument, Fazio allowed Cardan to go university and he entered Pavia University, where his father had studied, to read medicine despite his f