JEROME CARDAN 73 



first instance by these same patrons from the Nuremberg 

 press. 



But Cardan, while he was hard at work on his Arith- 

 metic, had not forgotten a certain report which had 

 caused no slight stir in the world of Mathematics some 

 three years before the issue of his book on Arithmetic, 

 an episode which may be most fittingly told in his own 

 words. "At this time 1 it happened that there came to 

 Milan a certain Brescian named Giovanni Colla, a man of 

 tall stature, and very thin, pale, swarthy, and hollow-eyed. 

 He was of gentle manners, slow in gait, sparing of his 

 words, full of talent, and skilled in mathematics. His 

 business was to bring word to me that there had been 

 recently discovered two new rules in Algebra for the 

 solution of problems dealing with cubes and numbers. 

 I asked him who had found them out, whereupon he 

 told me the name of the discoverer was Scipio Ferreo 

 of Bologna. ' And who else knows these rules ? ' I said. 

 He answered, 'Niccolo Tartaglia and Antonio Maria 

 Fiore.' And indeed some time later Tartaglia, when 

 he came to Milan, explained them to me, though un- 

 willingly ; and afterwards I myself, when working with 

 Ludovico Ferrari, 2 made a thorough study of the rules 

 aforesaid. We devised certain others, heretofore un- 

 noticed, after we had made trial of these new rules, and 

 out of this material I put together my Book of the 

 Great Art"* 



Before dealing with the events which led to the 

 composition of the famous work above-named, it may 



1 November 1536. 



2 Ferrari was one of Cardan's most distinguished pupils. " Ludo- 

 vicus Ferrarius Bononiensis qui Mathematicas et Mediolani et in 

 patria sua professus est, et singularis in illis eruditionis." De Vita 

 Propria, ch. xxxv. p. in. There is a short memoir of Ferrari in 

 Opera, torn. ix. 3 Opera, torn. i. p. 66. 



