Girolamo Cardano 1501 – 1576

Girolamo Cardano was an Italian Renaissance polymath, physician, mathematician, astrologer, and natural philosopher whose life spanned brilliance and scandal. He produced foundational work in the algebra of cubic and quartic equations, the early theory of probability, and clinical medicine, and he wrote a remarkable autobiography, The Book of My Life, that has become one of the most read documents of Renaissance self-understanding. His De Subtilitate and De Rerum Varietate offered an encyclopedic natural philosophy of marvels and causes. He died in Rome after a final imprisonment for an indiscreet horoscope of Christ.