The Sordid Past of the Cubic Formula
History is full of backstabbing rivalries: Edison and Tesla, Harding and Kerrigan, Tupac and Biggie. No less dramatic was a 16th-century conflict between Italian mathematicians Gerolamo Cardano, a brilliant but troubled polymath, and Niccolò Fontana, better known as Tartaglia (meaning “the stammerer,” after a teenage facial injury from a French soldier’s sword). The central issue: cubic equations.
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