Was it for the math? Or the money?

In my last Medium article, I note that in 1494 Fra Luca Pacioli published his book Summa de Arithmetica Geometria Proportione, commonly referred to as the Summa. In the conclusion of his book, Pacioli stated that the solution of

was as impossible as squaring the circle. Thus, he was saying that this is an impossible problem.[1]

It might have been impossible for Pacioli but not for Scipio del Ferro, the brilliant mathematician who emerged on the math scene as Pacioli was entering his golden years.

Del Ferro was born on February 6, 1465, about twenty years after Pacioli. In 1496, the University of Bologna appointed del Ferro as a lecturer of arithmetic and geometry. It is unfortunate that we cannot see his works because he kept them hidden. During the fifteenth century, the mathematics community was extremely competitive because of the academic competitions that offered money and a position in the university. Thus, academics kept their solutions secret and rarely shared them with others.

The only reason we know about del Ferro’s mathematical works is that he kept his work in a secret notebook. On his deathbed in 1526, he gave this notebook to his son-in-law Hannibal Nave, also a mathematician. Conveniently, his son-in-law was able to take over del Ferro’s position at the university. In an interesting turn of events, he also took the name del Ferro.

However, Nave was not the only mathematician in del Ferro’s circle to witness and see his mathematics…