[FOM] Is Cardano's formula ultimately irrelevant nowadays? (remarks and corrections)

[José Manuel Rodriguez Caballero]

>
> David wrote:
> Think about Fermat's "proof" of
> the FLT (which was the empty set, really, and yet it motivated 400+ years
> of intense investigations) vs. Cardano's formulas for the cubic equation
> (entirely correct, but ultimately irrelevant nowadays).


Remark 1. The whole theory of elliptic curves, which was the key in the
proof of Fermat's last theorem, can be considered as a generalization of
Cardano's formula. In this lecture there is enough argumentation for the
importance of Cardano's formula nowadays:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8FAjF7wUKQ

Remark 2. The so-called Cardano formula is usually attributed to Tartaglia,
but it was Scipione del Ferro who really introduced this formula in Europe.
The first reference that I found of a mathematician with a solution of the
cubic equation is Thabit ibn Qurra (836 - 901).
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CubicFormula.html

These are just a tiny remarks and corrections, I think that it does not
deserve to be developed further.

Kind Regards,
Jose M.
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