Lodovico Ferrari

Lodovico Ferrari (1522 to 1565) was an Italian mathematician, best known today for solving the quartic equation. Born in Bologna, into a family whose grandfather Bartolomeo had been forced out of Milan, he began his career as a servant of Gerolamo Cardano. Cardano found him extremely bright and taught him mathematics, and Ferrari then helped Cardano with his work on the cubic and quartic equations; he was mainly responsible for the solution of the quartic that Cardano published. While still in his teens he obtained a prestigious teaching post in Rome, which Cardano had resigned and recommended him for. He retired young and wealthy at forty two, moved back to Bologna and took a professorship of mathematics at the University of Bologna in 1565. He died shortly afterwards, according to a legend of white arsenic poisoning by his sister. In 1545 he was drawn into the dispute between Cardano and Niccolo Tartaglia over the solution of cubic equations, which historians now credit to both men as the Cardano and Tartaglia formula.