Cardano The Gambling Scholar [Hardcover]

Cardano, next to Vesalius the greatest physician of his day, was also a devoted and skilled gambler who played for personal pleasure and profit. His mathematical genius enabled him to devise simple rules of probability for his own benefit and for his gambling contemporaries. These he collected in hisBook on Games of Chanceand embellished them with essays on the tricks of cheats and kibitzers, as well as on psychological rules of play.

In this biography of a stormy Renaissance personality, Cardano's gambling studies are deciphered for the first time, and a translation of theBook on Games of Chanceis appended.

Originally published in 1953.

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