Born in Bologna, Italy, Lodovico's grandfather, Bartholomew Ferrari, was forced out of Milan to Bologna. Lodovico settled in Bologna, Italy.
He came to Gerolamo Cardano as a youth in November 30, 1536 and Cardano has described that day with a lot of enthusiasm in his writing. Ferrari was fourteen when he started working in the household of Cardano.
He was extremely bright. He was a boy of very extraordinary natural ability, so Cardano treated him first like a disciple and then as collaborator.
By attending Cardano’s lectures, Ferrari learned Latin, Greek and mathematics. At the age of eighteen Ferrari was able to obtain a prestigious teaching post after Cardano resigned from it and recommended him.
Ferrari aided Cardano on his solutions for quadratic equations and cubic equations, and was mainly responsible for the solution of quartic equations that Cardano published in Ars magna (1545; Great Art).
The publication of Ars magna brought Ferrari into a celebrated controversy with the noted Italian mathematician Niccolo Tartaglia over the solution of the cubic equation.
He was twenty years old when he contested publicly with Zuanne da Coi and Tartaglia: Tartaglia declares in his own book that he, Tartaglia, was left the victor: Cardano states that Ferrari overcame them both and appeals confidently, in support of his assertion, to the public records then extant and the common understanding in the town.
Two years afterwards the brilliant young scholar was held in so much esteem, that the possession of his services was contended for by the great men around him.
Ferrari eventually retired young (only 42) and quite rich. He then moved back to his home town of Bologna where he lived with his widowed sister Maddalena to take up a professorship in mathematics at the University of Bologna in 1565, where he died shortly thereafter due to white arsenic poisoning.
Ferrari death was a pro-found loss to Cardano. Cardano wrote an account of Ferrari’s life and achievements and acknowledge that he had no more loyal friend and co-worker.
Lodovico Ferrari (2 February 1522 – 5 October 1565)
