Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia's Work

Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia was an Italian mathematician who lived from 1499/1500 to 1557. When he was 12, a French army attacked his town and home, and a soldier cut his face and throat. Left with a speech impediment, he became known by the name “Tartaglia,” which means “the stammerer” in Italian. Tartaglia made many great contributions to the world and specifically to mathematics. He is responsible for finding a solution for cubic equations, writing important scientific books, and translating Euclid’s Elements as well as some of Archimedes’ works. While Tartaglia’s works are often overshadowed by the work of Gerolamo Cardano and Luigi Ferrari, his solution for cubic equations was the most important first step that Cardano and Ferrari built their work upon. Tartaglia was born in Brescia, Italy in 1499/1500. His father, Michele Fontana, was a dispatch rider, which was the equivalent of a modern day mailman. When his father was murdered by robbers in 1506, Tartaglia, his two siblings, and their mother were left in poverty (Hannon). Because of this, Tartaglia had to teach himself how to read, write, and do …show more content…
Previous translations of Elements had been translated into Latin from an old Arabic text and were only accessible to scholars (Hannon). They also contained mistakes and mistranslations. Tartaglia was able to find a copy in the original Greek and fix the mistakes. He also added his own commentary and explanations (Hannon). Galileo was able to use Tartaglia’s translation of Euclid’s Elements for his own work ("Niccolo Tartaglia"). Tartaglia also translated many of Archimedes’ works into Latin, which made it easier for European mathematicians to access them. Tartaglia’s translation of Archimedes’ work included the equation for buoyancy as well as formulas for finding the area and volume of spheres, cylinders, and other geometric shapes