Talk:Nicolo Tartaglia

Volume of a tetrahedron

The section on the volume of a tetrahedron is anachronistic and should probably be removed. Tartaglia has a numerical example in the General Trattato where he calculates the volume of a tetrahedron with sides 20, 18, 16, 15, 14, 13 ([General Trattato, Part IV, Book 2], p. 35r and following). Ostermann and Wanner have a brief discussion of this construction in Geometry by its History (p. 298-9), asserting mistakes in his calculations and saying that "Many texts or internet sites call [the Cayley-Menger determinant and other determinant formulas] 'Tartaglia's formula', which seems exaggerated."

Tartaglia inscribes the tetrahedron in a sphere and applies Volume = 1/3 Base x Height, a formula originating in antiquity. He uses Thales Theorem and the Pythagorean theorem, certainly showing his mastery of solid geometry and overall genius for calculation, but not quite as anticipatory as the ascription of Cayley-Menger to him suggests. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MikeB17 (talk • contribs) 15:11, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

In the end I focused on what Tartaglia did do rather than what he didn't do. The former is highly impressive without embellishment. "Tartaglia's formula" seems not exist in his writings and that needs to be documented (hence the detail), considering the traction it has gotten on the Internet and the negative attention that has gotten from scholars. MikeB17 (talk) 13:58, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Untitled

Hi all, the name should be Niccolò with an accent. "Niccolo" is not a name in Italian. Most Italian pages on the subject report the accented version. What about moving the article? Furthermore, there should be a note reporting that tartaglia was actually a nickname, "tartagliare" means "to stutter". Orzetto 06:51, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The article is incomplete. The McTutor link at the bottom provides good material. Stammer 16:25, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

fixed article-verb agreement in the opening line. i think "...method, let's say a construction, to..." near the end should be fixed/removed. Sullage 20:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Italian translation of Archimedes and Euclid

I never heard of such translations of Archimedes by Tartaglia and I really doubt that this is true. It is well known that he appeared as editor (not translator) for a Latin (not Italian) version of some texts of Archimedes. Tartaglia claimed the authorship for the translation, but it was just a copy of a translation done by William of Moerbeke in the 13th century.

By the way, categorising his translation of Euclid's Elements as "was especially significant" is venturous. In accordance with Tartaglia's role in mathematics as a sort of private teacher (he never taught at universities) this translation might have been significant for the type of students he had. The lingua franca for renaissance mathematicians was Latin and not Italian. Finally the famous historian of mathematics Moritz Cantor mentioned in his "Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik" that Tartaglias translation was based on two Latin translations and ignored the origininal greek text, which was already available in printed form at that time.

After all the statement about Tartaglia's translation seems to express some sort of admiration for Tartaglia, but it doesn't match our historical knowledge.

Labus (talk) 21:55, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, according to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography by Charles Coulston Gillispie, Tartaglia "produced an edition of William of Moerbeke's thirteenth-centruy Latin version of some of Archimedes' works. Tartaglia returned to Archimedes in 1551, publishing an Italian translation, with commentary, of part of Book I of De insidentibus aquae that was included in the Ragionamento primo on the Travagliata inventione". I think the statement that Tartaglia translated texts by Archimedes therefore is true. 132.229.121.233 (talk) 16:20, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Tartaglia's first solution to the cubic

Is there any written text about Tartaglia's original solution to $x^{3}\pm ax^{2}=b\,$? Also, I read somewhere that Tartaglia stole Scipione del Ferro's solution to $x^{3}+px=q\,$ while he was contesting with Antonio Fiore. Albmont (talk) 19:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

If you check out the website for MacTutor listed in the external links section there is an article about the poem which he wrote (translated to English) that allowed him to memorize the formula without having to write it down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrorangesmu (talk • contribs) 22:14, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

There is a nice discussion of the poetic form that Tartaglia used as well as the original Italian and another English translation available. Is there a reason why we can't include that on this page? Copyright restrictions?Mrorangesmu (talk) 22:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

All the sources I have checked indicate that Tartaglia came up with his solutions on his own. He did this in response to a challenge from del Ferro's student Antonio Maria FioreMrorangesmu (talk) 20:15, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Tartaglia's name

It looks as if his name is in fact not "Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia", but "Nicolo Tartaglia". His surname is not "Fontana" and he never wrote "Niccolò" himself, as Prof Friedrich Katscher said in the German Wikipedia - he wrote a book about Tartaglia. If you can read German, please have a look at de:Nicolo Tartaglia. Best greetings, --134.130.131.116 (talk) 07:50, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Tartaglia's cubic problems

This is an interesting compilation of the problems that Tartaglia had to deal in the contests with Antonio Fior and Ferrari: http://www.gap-system.org/~history/HistTopics/Tartaglia_v_Cardan.html. Albmont (talk) 14:09, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Tartaglia's formula

In Tetrahedron#Volume it is stated that Tartaglia's formula is is essentially due to the painter Piero della Francesca in the 15th century. If this is the case, it should be also stated in the Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia article. Maxal (talk) 16:54, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Requested move 12 April 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved to Nicolo Tartaglia. With only two participants, including the nominator, this was a very lightly attended discussion; however, there is no minimum participation required for RMs, and the discussion nevertheless addresses a number of relevant arguments. Agreement was unanimous that "Fontana" should be removed from the page title. Proposals for the mononym Tartaglia, disambiguated or otherwise, did not attract consensus; however, "Nicolo Tartaglia" attained consensus as a compromise title. (non-admin closure) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 19:05, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

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Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia → Niccolò Tartaglia – I don't see any support in the article for the name "Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia". Presumably his legal name (to the extent there was such a thing) was always Niccolò Fontana. The name he's most known by, Tartaglia, is technically a nickname. Images in the article suggest that he published as Nicolaus Tartaglia and Nicolo Tartaglia, with no "Fontana" in either. It seems a bit OR-ish to combine them into the tripartite name in the current title, and I don't believe I've ever seen his name in that form elsewhere.
To be honest, my real preference would be to move to just Tartaglia, which is the WP:COMMONNAME, if he passes WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which I think it's likely he does. However that would take more legwork to check up on. Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Update: it looks like "Nicolaus Tartaglia" was used in the caption of a portrait; I don't have any evidence he published under or otherwise used that exact name.

• Comment I would reword the first sentence to something like

  Niccolò Fontana, known as Tartaglia, was ...

--Trovatore (talk) 20:31, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

• Indented comment beginning Update: so the RM bot can find the timestamp. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 22:49, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

• Update I happened to see that there's a section above called Tartaglia's name, and now I have some doubts about the best title to move this to.
  • The case for moving it away from anything including "Fontana" is stronger than ever — it sounds like that may never have been part of his name at all. It would be a great service if someone would track down reliable sources for, against, or both. In the case of "both" we should explicitly mention that in the article.
  • The modern spelling "Niccolò" seems a bit in question. He himself seems to have used "Nicolo" in published works. He does seem to have been a rough contemporary of Niccolò Macchiavelli, but the spelling may not have been fully standardized. Of course if modern sources overwhelmingly use the modern spelling then we should too, but we should probably mention that he used "Nicolo".
  • We could finesse both these issues if we could just move the article to Tartaglia (moving that page to Tartaglia (disambiguation), though this would require verifying that he meets PRIMARYTOPIC. This is my first choice if he does.
  • Failing that, I think Tartaglia (mathematician) would also be a reasonable choice.
• Sorry for the somewhat unfocused RM; it turns out to be more complicated than I thought. --Trovatore (talk) 01:36, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

  I support dropping "Fontana", bringing us in line with a bunch of large other language Wikipedias and the old books/prints used in the article. I don't care much about how we spell the "Nicholas" in Nicolo Tartaglia. I oppose plain Tartaglia or a disambiguated variant; we don't use Euler or Linnaeus as article titles either, and we do know the first name, and it is used reasonably often. —Kusma (talk) 11:53, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

  It isn't really parallel to Euler; he had a first name (Leonhard) and a family name. Tartaglia is not a family name but a nickname, and in my experience he's usually referred to mononymically by that name. That said, Nicolo Tartaglia strikes me as an acceptable solution given that he published under that name. -Trovatore (talk) 16:53, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

First name and language

It occurs to me to wonder whether the distinction between "Nicolo" (as Tartaglia seems to have written it) and "Niccolò" might be that the latter is in Italian and the former is in Venetian or Brescian? --Trovatore (talk) 19:36, 13 April 2023 (UTC)