Mathematician:Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia

Mathematician

Italian mathematician, engineer and surveyor.

• Published first Italian translations of Archimedes and Euclid.
• Devised a solution to the general cubic equation independently of Scipione del Ferro, later published by Gerolamo Cardano and now known as Cardano's Formula.
• Challenged in $1535$ by Antonio Maria del Fiore to a public contest to solve cubics, and won convincingly.

Nationality

Italian

History

• Born: 1499 or 1500
• 1512: Suffered a war injury to his face resulting in an inability to speak clearly, which earned him the nickname "Tartaglia" ("Stammerer").
• Died: December 13, 1557

Theorems

• Tartaglia's Formula for the volume of any irregular tetrahedron (also known as Piero della Francesca's Tetrahedron Formula, for Piero della Francesca)
• Tartaglia's Triangle, also known as Pascal's Triangle
• Tartaglia's Poem

Results named for Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia can be found here.

Definitions of concepts named for Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia can be found here.

Publications

• 1543: Translation into Italian of Euclid's The Elements
• 1546: Quesiti, et Inventioni Diverse ("Questions, and Various Inventions")
• 1556: General Trattato di Numeri et Misure ("General Treatise on Number and Measure")

Also known as

Appears variously on the title pages of his works:

Nicolo Tartaglia

Some sources give his first name as Nicola.

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• 1971: Allan Clark: Elements of Abstract Algebra ... (previous) ... (next): Introduction
• 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): A List of Mathematicians in Chronological Sequence
• 1992: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Puzzles ... (previous) ... (next): Exchanging the Knights
• 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): A List of Mathematicians in Chronological Sequence
• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Tartaglia, Niccolò (c. 1500-1557)
• 2004: Ian Stewart: Galois Theory (3rd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Historical Introduction: Polynomial Equations
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Tartaglia, Niccolò (c. 1500-1557)
• 2008: Ian Stewart: Taming the Infinite ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $4$: Lure of the Unknown: Cubic equations
• 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Tartaglia, Niccolò (1499-1557)