Synopses & Reviews
A bright star of the Italian Renaissance, Girolamo Cardano was an internationally-sought-after astrologer, physician, and natural philosopher, a creator of modern algebra, and the inventor of the universal joint. Condemned by the Inquisition to house arrest in his old age, Cardano wrote The Book of My Life, an unvarnished and often outrageous account of his character and conduct. Whether discussing his sex life or his diet, the plots of academic rivals or meetings with supernatural beings, or his deep sorrow when his beloved son was executed for murder, Cardano displays the same unbounded curiosity that made him a scientific pioneer. At once picaresque adventure and campus comedy, curriculum vitae, and last will, The Book of My Life is an extraordinary Renaissance self-portrait—a book to set beside Montaigne's Essays and Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography.
Synopsis
Girolamo Cardano was a doctor, astrologer, mathematician, and natural philosopher who helped create modern algebra and invented the universal joint. He wrote this colorful autobiography while under house arrest by the Inquisition. A lively mix of picaresque adventure and campus comedy, Cardanos story gives a fascinating glimpse into the early modern period, when notions of science and the self now taken for granted were very much unresolved. The book of My Life is a vivid portrait of the life of a free-thinking intellectual and the 16th-century world in which he lived.