17 January 1570

It was a rainy and gloomy day. No eye contact was being made on the streets as everyone was either looking down or covered by an umbrella. It was 18 years later and I still had my daily routine of grabbing a news paper and heading to my favorite tea shop. I had reached the corner where I could usually hear the paper boy yelling todays headline story, but due to the ringing of the rain smashing the stop of my umbrella, or maybe it was due to the fact that I did not want to actually hear it, I was unable to hear what the boy was yelling. "Good day boy" as I handed him over a euro and waited for my change, but it wouldn't be good for long. I stuffed the folded paper under my armpit until I arrived at the tea shop and dried off. I sat down at my favorite table, plopped the paper in front of me to read the headline story for the day, "Cardano keeps falling: Imprisoned." I could not believe what I was reading. 18 years ago he was on top of the world, seemed as if he had turned his life around from the past failures in which I was told about. I was anxious to read. I did not know I wanted to keep a good memory of him and who he was and what he has contributed to this world, or if I wanted to see how he fell off the top of his mountain and ended up in jail. My curiosity ended up winning and I began to read. . . "Cardano, world renown mathematician and physician, established professor of medicine at the University of Pavia, and lifesaver of John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, imprisoned on a charge of heresy." For those of you that are unaware, heresy is the belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine. Anyway, back to the article, "Cardano casted a horoscope of Jesus Christ. It is unaware how long the sentence will take place but we do know that he is currently held in the Milan center jail without bond. This seams to be the bottom of the mountain that Cardano was falling down for the past 13 years. In 1557, Cardano's oldest son who was a respected doctor secretly married a girl in which he thought was "a worthless, shameless woman." It was said that even with the disobedience, Cardano continued to support his son and his wife financially, but not in any other way. This lack of support from Cardano caused a feud between the family of the wife and the Cardano family. The oldest son was tired of being mocked by his wife and the family of his wife and decided to poison her! He confessed to the murder of his wife and was placed in jail. News travels fast, especially within confinement, and as a result, Cardano's son had his left hand cut off and on the 13th of April 1560, he was executed in jail. This was the hit is believed to be the starting point of the downfall in which he was unable to get back up from. Cardano began to lose his reputation being the father of a murderer. He started to revery to being suck up, hot headed, and arrogant as he was in his younger days, this created a lot of enemies especially amongst his colleagues who were amongst some of the most hated. After his oldest sons death, Cardano had two remaining children. His only daughter died only a few years later from contracting syphilis while performing prostitution, her only way of making money to provide for herself. His remaining son had a gambling problem, even broke into his fathers house at times to steal money and valuables to try to make up for his deficit. In Cardano's autobiography he wrote about the "four greatest sadnesses in his life: the fist was my marriage; the second, the bitter death of my son; the third, imprisonment; the fourth, the base character of my youngest son." I dropped the paper from my hands and felt a cold rush all over my body. I felt as if I had just lost a friend. "Could I have done something different to change where he was today? Surely I could have, right?" I thought to myself. "I could have reached out to him, maybe all that he needed was a friend. Well, it is never to late to start." I proceeded to write a letter to Cardano that would eventually be delivered to him in jail. I told him about how he was an idol of mine and someone that I looked up to in multiple different aspects of life, one of those being mathematics. I studies his publications and wrote about how my son was learning the quadratic formula in high school and how it is related to his findings, even though his being much more complicated. I told him that I was praying for him. I prayed that he would receive grace and mercy while in jail. That he could use his time in there as a time of reflection. If he were to ever get out of jail, I told him where I lived and that he was always welcome and that even though we only met twice in our lives, very briefly I might add, that I always had a bed made for him.

Sources:
- O'Connor, J J, and E F Robertson. “Girolamo Cardano.” Cardan Biography, School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, June 1998, www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Cardan.html.
- Boyd, Andy, and John H. Lienhard. “Engines Of Our Ingenuity.” No. 1950: Girolamo Cardano, University of Houston, 1988, uh.edu/engines/epi1950.htm.
- J Cardano, Autobiography (New York, 1930)