TLDR: In the Rennaissance Italy, Maths Duels were a thing. (Mathematicians would be challange eachother to maths duels, their pride and honor on thr line.) Antonio Fior was thaught by Scopione del Ferro (who also was Da Vinci’s teacher) how to solve the cubic equation. Del Ferro never published his discovery, because he needed it as a trump card, should he be challanged to a duel. With this trump card in hands Fior challanged Tartaglia to a duel. Fior failed misserably as he could not solve a single problem Tartaglia had given him, while Tartaglia himself had come up with a solution for the cubic equation and solved every single problem Fior had given him.
Del Ferro never published his discovery, because he needed it as a trump card, should he be challanged to a duel.
lmao
I love how ridiculous the past is sometimes
It’s acutally more ridiculous than that. Because Tartaglia also didn’t want to publish how he did it. He was later convinced by Gerolamo Cordano to explain him his method. Tartaglia did make Cordano swear on everything he would never publish it. When writting his book “Ars Magna” Cordano really wanted to add Tartaglias explanation and his puppil Ludovico Ferrari came to his help. Ferrari had gotten his hands on del Ferro’s notes about the equation(he had died before the Tartaglia and Fior Duel and his old notes where sold out by his family) . He gave it to Cordano, who now was no longer bound to the oath to Tartaglia because he could have gotten solution from del Ferro’s note. So he published the explaination to the equation in his book quoting Tartaglia and del Ferro as the minds behind that equation. Tartaglia was not amussed and tried to copy strike Cordano and they started the biggest intelectual beef of their time. Ferrari found it super funny and kept teasing Tartaglia until they had a duel. Ferrari mobbed the floor with Tartaglia. Cordano and Ferrari became famous while Tartaglia lost all his honour and reputation.
Sometimes history really ia funnier and better than fiction.
I wonder how much info was just straight up lost this way.
Not math duels but the reason MIT and many Ivy leagues instituted a swim test for graduation is because of alumni drowning incidents.
Separately, a lot of UK mathematicians died in WWI Henry Moseley most famously at Gallipoli 1915. But many also died figuring out various airplane instruments and improvements. Then there are various scientists killed by the church. The guy who invented group theory died in a duel at 20, etc.
