ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Lodovico Ferrari

Lodovico (or Ludovico Ferrari) was an Italian mathematician.

• Student of Gerolamo Cardano.
• First one to devise a solution to the general quartic equation, which was later published by Cardano and is now known as Ferrari's Method.

Nationality

Italian

History

• 2nd February 1522: Born in Bologna, Papal States (now Italy)
• 30th November 1536: Went to work for Gerolamo Cardano, and became his student of mathematics
• 1540: Discovered solution of the quartic equation
• 1541: Became a public lecturer in geometry
• 10th August 1548: Defeated Tartaglia in a public algebra contest
• 1565: Called to a professorship in the University of Bologna
• 5th October 1565: Died in Bologna (supposedly murdered by his sister Maddalena by arsenic).

Theorems

• Ferrari's Method for solving the quartic.

Books and Papers

• Collaborated with Gerolamo Cardano on his Ars Magna

Also see

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Lodovico Ferrari": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• Allan Clark: Elements of Abstract Algebra (1971)... (previous)... (next): Introduction