Books: Cinquecento Crapshooter

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The price of illegitimacy can be high and Cardano's enemies made him pay it. For years they denied him membership in the College of Physicians in Milan, and thus the right to practice medicine in his home town. Cardano moved to a village near Padua for a while, but could not support his family, either as a country doctor or by gambling. Back in Milan, however, he began to lecture, write and debate with such skill and vehemence that he won the right to practice, finally rose to such eminence that kings and archbishops solicited his services.

Success did not bring happiness. One of Cardano's sons became a thief, the other was executed for poisoning his wife. Cardano was jailed as a heretic for a while, but argued his way free. Death, when it came to him at 75, one day in 1576, found a quiet old scholar, living on a pope's pension in Rome. The old gambler had long since told himself: "The greatest advantage in gambling comes from not playing at all."

Ironically, Cardano comes alive today because of his gambling. Author Oystein Ore, a Yale mathematics professor, has disinterred the eccentric genius to show that Cardano's book on the subject contains some of the first brave steps toward the modern theory of probability.