Cardano - the Greatest Genius ever?
Girolamo Cardano was possibly one of the greatest geniuses ever whose versatility had no limits. Cardano was a man of his times, with every fault that a man could have, unprepossessing, flippant, arrogant, unscrupulous and dishonest. But at the same time, he could be tirelessly kind, forgiving and extremely generous and dedicated.
Cardano was born in Pavia on 24thSept. 1501, the illegitimate child of Fazio Cardano a mathematically gifted lawyer who was a friend of Leonardo da Vinci. In his autobiography, Cardano claimed that his mother had attempted to abort him but failed. Shortly before his birth, his mother had to move from Milan to Pavia to escape the plague; having lost her other three children to the endemic.
In 1520, Cardano entered the University of Pavia. When war broke out, the university was forced to close and Cardano moved to the University of Padua to complete his studies in medicine. He squandered the small bequest from his father and turned to gambling to finance his medical studies. Card games, dice and chess were the methods he used to make a living. His understanding of probability meant he had an advantage over his opponents and, in general, he won more than he lost. He had to keep dubious company for his gambling. Once, when he thought he was being cheated at cards, Cardano, who always carried a knife, slashed the face of his opponent. Gambling became an addiction that was to last many years and rob Cardano of valuable time, money and reputation.
Cardano was awarded his doctorate in medicine in 1525 and applied to join the College of Physicians in Milan, where his mother still lived. The College did not wish to admit him for, despite the respect he had gained as an exceptional student, he had a reputation as a difficult man, whose unconventional, uncompromising opinions were aggressively put forward with little tact or thought for the consequences. The discovery of Cardano's illegitimate birth gave the College a reason to reject his application. But twelve years later, in 1539, the rules for fellowship were changed to induct him as a fellow; as his stature grew as a physician and many of his cures were even considered miraculous that time. He was the first to describe typhoid fever.
He became rector of the College of Physicians and gained the reputation of being the greatest physician in the world. Cardano received many offers from the heads of state in Europe, anxious to receive the best medical attention, but only once was the incentive great enough to tempt him from Italy.
John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, had suffered from asthma for ten years but gradually the frequency and severity of the attacks had grown worse. The court physicians of both the French king and German emperor did their best but ultimately failed and the Archbishop of St Andrews was near death. He turned in desperation to Cardano, promising him a huge sum and a position in the court if he would come to Scotland and treat him. Cardano was not lecturing when he received the plea and so treated him to health for which he was paid over two thousand gold crowns.
Cardano was not just a just one of the finest physicians of his time; he was also a prolific writer, mathematician, physicist, astrologer and engineer! While practicing medicine, he continued his research in other subjects and published his works in physics, mathematics, astrology and natural sciences.
Today, he is best known for his achievements in algebra. He published the solutions to the cubic and quartic equations in his book Ars Magna in 1545. He acknowledged the existence of what are now called imaginary numbers, although he did not understand their properties (Mathematical field theory was developed centuries later). In Opus Novum de Proportionibus, he introduced the binomial coefficients and the binomial theorem.
Cardano was notoriously short of money and kept himself solvent by being an accomplished gambler and chess player. His book about games of chance, Liber de ludo aleae, written in the 1560s, but not published until 1663, contains the first systematic treatment of probability, as well as a section on effective cheating methods in gambling!!
Cardano invented several mechanical devices including the combination lock, the gimbal consisting of three concentric rings allowing a supported compass or gyroscope to rotate freely, and the Cardano shaft with universal joints, which allows the transmission of rotary motion at various angles and is used in vehicles to this day. He studied hypocycloids, published in de proportionibus 1570. The generating circles of these hypocycloids were later named Cardano circles or cardanic circles and were used for the construction of the first high-speed printing presses. He made several contributions to hydrodynamics and held that perpetual motion is impossible, except in celestial bodies. He published two encyclopaedias of natural science which contain a wide variety of inventions, facts, and occult superstitions. He also introduced the Cardano grille, a cryptographic tool, in 1550.
Significantly, in the history of deaf education, he was one of the first to state that deaf people could learn without learning how to speak first.
His principal misfortunes arose from the crimes and calamities of his sons, one of whom was an utter reprobate, while the tragic fate of the other overwhelmed the father with anguish. Cardano's eldest and favorite son was executed in 1560 after he confessed to having poisoned his wife. His other son was a gambler, who stole money from him. Cardano was accused of heresy in 1570 because he had computed and published the horoscope of Jesus in 1554. He was arrested, had to spend several months in prison and was forced to abjure his professorship. But the support from the patients he had treated forced the court to view it leniently, and few months later he was released. Cardano went to Rome, where he received an unexpectedly warm reception. He was granted immediate membership of the College of Physicians and the Pope, who had now apparently forgiven Cardano, and granted him a pension. It was in this period that his autobiography De Vita Propriia was written, although it was published much later in Paris and subsequently translated into all European languages.
Cardano is reported to have correctly predicted the exact date of his own death, 21st Sept 1576 in his autobiography, but it has been claimed that he achieved this by committing suicide!
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