ABSTRACT
Girolamo Cardano was a famous Italian mathematician and physician who graduated with a doctorate of medicine from the University of Padua in 1526. A chess enthusiast and remarkable polymath, Cardano was the first mathematician to make systematic use of negative numbers and invented the Cardan gear mechanism but his life was blighted by his difficult personality, frequent financial woes and personal tragedies (most notably the execution of his eldest son Giovanni for the murder of his wife). His autobiography entitled The Book of My Life (De vita propria liber) was finished soon before his death and published posthumously in 1634. In the following chapter, a melancholy Cardano reflects on his life and how his emotional temperament has changed during his lifetime and the toll that ‘mental anguish’ took on his body.
