Cardan [Cardano; Cardanus], Jerome [Geronimo; Hieronymus; Girolamo] (1501–76)

Lawyer, mathematician and physician, born in Pavia, Milan, Italy. Lived a life of family and professional drama worthy of a novel and fully documented in an autobiography. Became professor of mathematics at Padua, and of medicine at Pavia and Bologna. Prolific author (200 works) of which his greatest work was Ars Magna (1545, Great Art) which gave the first algebraic solution of cubic equations.