Nicolo Tartaglia

   After reading the story of the contest for solving the cubic equation, I was immediately interested in Nicolo Tartaglia, his life, his debates, and his other mathematical discoveries. After traveling to Italy I was also interested in his childhood, the towns he grew up in and lived, and where he taught and practiced mathematics.
    Tartaglia was born in Brescia Italy, he was born into a lower middle class family, and although his father was just a messenger, he was still well off enough to be educated for the first part of his life. However, after his father's death his family was catapulted into poverty and he spent the remainder of his early years being self taught. When he was a teenager he was injured by a french soldier' sabre to his jaw, the injury was nearly life threatening, and even though his mother could not afford medical treatment she was still able to nurse him back to health (http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Tartaglia.html). The injury was concealed by Tartaglia's beard in later years, however, he had trouble talking his whole life.
    Tartaglia was obviously skilled at teaching himself, since he proved to be somewhat of a prodigy and was taken on as an apprentice to a patron who helped him further his education. He later became a mathematics teacher, holding positions at various schools until he finally arrived in Venice, where he became well known for participating in debates, leading us up to the point in his life when the famed contest between he and Fior over cubic equations occurred. Although Tartaglia prevailed, and discovered the method for solving them just before the debate, he did not however, publish, or reap any real benefit from having discovered the solution.
  Fior had only learned it from someone else, and had not discovered it like Tartaglia had, and was decisively less affective in the contest. Tartaglia did not publish his findings, instead sat on them, in hopes of saving them for a later date. This was his major flaw, since another Italian mathematician named Cardan was extremely interested in finding the solution and publishing it. Cardan managed to learn it form Tartaglia, but only under a condition of complete secrecy, however, after finding out that Fior's teacher had solved it first he felt that it wouldn't be breaking his oath to publish Fior's version.
  This obviously upset Tartaglia and bitter feud erupted between Tartaglia and Ferrari, Cardan's assistant. The two exchanged hate mail until their arguments finally culminated in a debate. Although Tartaglia was thought to be the more experienced mathematician, he was unpleasantly shocked by Ferrari's knowledge and skills. Ferrari and Cardan had done extensive work,Theorems and proofs for solving cubic equations and was well versed when it came time for the debate. Tartaglia left the debate after the first day, sensing an impending loss. This loss damaged his reputation and hurt his credentials as a teacher and mathematician, from which he never recovered.
   Tartaglia accomplished and published much in the way of mathematics on ballistic and artillery fire. His work would later be built on by Galileo and others. Although his intelligence did little in the way of pulling him out of the life he had started out in, he did contribute heavily to 16th century mathematics, and mathematics today(http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/periodictable/html/ta.html).