This is a landmark in science writing that resurrects from the vaults of neglect the polymath Jerome Cardano, a Milanese of the sixteenth century. Who is Jerome Cardano? A gambler and blasphemer, inventor and schemer, plagued by demons and anxieties, astrologer to kings, emperors, and popes. This stubborn and unworldly man was the son of a lawyer and a brothel keeper, but also a gifted physician and the unacknowledged discoverer...