from many years of gambling away his money, his wife’s
jewelry, and the family’s furniture. His best-known work, Artis
magnae sive de regulis algebraicis liber unus(also known as
Ars Magnaor The Great Art), gives a SOLUTIONto CUBICand
QUARTIC EQUATIONs, despite the fact that he learned about
cubic equations from NICHOLAS TARTAGLIAand promised to
never tell the secret of how he solved them. But upon
discovering that SCIPIONE DEL FERRO, rather than Tartaglia,
had been the first person to solve these, he published the
results with a clear conscience. The cardan-shaft, a mechanical
part that absorbs vertical movement in rear-wheel-drive cars,
was invented by Cardan and first used in a carriage in 1548.Cartwright, Dame Mary Lucy(1900–98) Devoted to mathematics and
history, this British woman chose math because she felt it
involved less work than memorizing facts and dates from
history. Her work with John Littlewood solved the mystery
behind problems with ratio and radar, and was the foundation
for chaos theory.
Cataldi, Pietro Antonio(1548–1626) Italian who became a math
teacher at the age of 17, and went on to write more than 30
math books on topics such as PERFECT NUMBERs, CONTINUED
FRACTIONs, and algebra. His book, Operetta di ordinanze
quadre,published in 1618, was specifically on the military
applications of algebra.
Cauchy, Augustin-Louis(1789–1857) This famous French
mathematician grew up with PIERRE-SIMON LAPLACEand
JOSEPH-LOUIS LAGRANGEas family friends, and at the age of
13 began to study languages based on Lagrange’s
recommendation as a foundation for math. Cauchy contributed
more work to the field of mathematics than any other person in
history, writing 789 papers, many of which were more than
300 pages long. Some of his most famous topics include
convergent and divergent infinite series, functions, differential
calculus, astronomy, wave theory, the dispersion of light, and
algebraic analysis.
Cavalieri, Bonaventura(1598–1647) The Italian mathematician
famous for inventing the principle of indivisibles, published in
1635 in Geometria indivisibilis continuorum nova,and based
Cartwright – Cavalieri BIOGRAPHIES
Cartwright – Cavalieri BIOGRAPHIES
Augustin-Louis Cauchy
(Courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè
Visual Archives, E. Scott Barr
Collection)