JEROME CARDAN. 



243 



may well have been considered conclusive as to the identity 

 of magnetic and electric attraction. Yet within a very 

 few years it was challenged. 



On the 24th of September, 1501, there was born in 

 Milan the first of that trio of Italian philosophers whose 

 achievements in physical science seem all the more bril- 

 liant by contrast with the ignorance and superstition of the 

 period covered by their lives. To two of these men Fra 

 Paolo Sarpi and John Baptista Porta some reference has 

 already been made. Girolamo Cardano, 1 or Jerome Car- 



dan, as his name is commonly Anglicized, belonged to the 

 generation immediately preceding theirs; but the three 

 lives overlapped, and much of their work was done con- 

 temporaneously. There is little resemblance to the mer- 

 curial, inquisitive, precocious Porta, still less to the 



1 Morley, H.: The Life of Girolamo Cardano of Milan, Physician. 

 The portrait of Cardan here given is from a contemporary print forming 

 the frontispiece of the 1553 edition of his treatise, De rerum Varietate. 

 The statement of his age as 49 years does not accord with the date of his 

 birth as given by his biographers. 



