A Mathematical History Tour: Pavia

Saturday, March 14, 2026

Einstein and Pavia

Ponte Coperto, River Ticino, Pavia, Italy

Normally on today's date - March 14 - I'm encouraging people to celebrate Pi Day. But this year I've decided to post in honor of the birthday of Albert Einstein. I'm choosing to write about one slice of his life :-)

Ponte Coperto, River Ticino, Pavia, Italy

Ponte Coperto, River Ticino, Pavia, Italy - dome of Duomo di Pavai in background

Einstein's family moved to Pavia from Munich, seeking better possibilities for his father's electrical business. Einstein was a teenager at this time, and still in gymnasium (high school), so he stayed behind in Munich to finish his schooling and joined his family during school holidays. Young Albert quickly fell in love with this beautiful city. Because of this, much of my post is simply pictures of the beauty of Pavia - with a splash of humor at the end.

Duomo di Pavia

Pavia University

Ancient Towers outside Pavia University

Walking through Pavia

Einstein would take walks through the city with his sister Maja - something he still reminisced about decades later and looked back on fondly. He especially enjoyed the covered bridge, Ponte Coperto, over the River Ticino that flows through Pavia, which is why I opened this post with so many pictures of the covered bridge.

Riverside walk in Pavia, Italy - Ponte Coperto in the distance

View from Ponte Coperto, Pavia, Italy

More than 50 years later, Einstein mentioned Pavia in a letter. A phrase from that letter is engraved on a plaque inside the bridge memorializing Einstein's time in Pavia:

AN DIE SCHÖNE BRÜCKE IN PAVIA HABE ICH OFT GEDACHT . . .

I have often thought of the beautiful bridge in Pavia . . .

Einstein Plaque, Ponte Coperto, Pavia, Italy

And now for the silly ending that I can't help but include.

Just a bit of a walk down-river from the bridge is an intriguing sight that I like to believe inspired some of Einstein's whimsy.

Walking alongside the Ticino River, Pavia, Italy

La Linguacciona, Pavia, Italy

I mean, he was still thinking of his time in Pavia half a century later, so might La Linguacciona have inspired Einstien's pose in a picture taken many years later? We'll never know for sure, but I like to think it did.

Albert Einstein on his birthday in 1951

Thursday, August 28, 2025

Fazio Cardano

University of Pavia

On this day, 501 years ago, Fazio Cardano crossed the threshold into the unseen world he had courted in life. His name lingers in the shadow of his son, the great Girolamo Cardano, yet Fazio himself was no less a figure of wonder. True to the Renaissance spirit, Fazio was a man of many parts: jurist, physician, and mathematician. He taught geometry at the Piatti Foundation of Milan and lectured at the University of Pavia, within sight of that city’s towers that still rise as pictured below.

Fazio was a close friend and mathematical consultant to Leonardo da Vinci, and he translated a 13th-century book on optics by Archbishop John Peckham of Canterbury, which Leonardo used in setting up his own optical experiments. But Fazio’s story does not rest in academia alone. From his youth he was haunted—or perhaps chosen—by spirits. He once drove away a folletto, a mischievous sprite, but later kept a familiar spirit, seeking its aid in trials, and turning only in direst need to the saints. In August of 1491 he recorded a visitation by seven beings at once: demons, angels, or travelers from some other realm—who can say?

Half a millennium later, we remember Fazio Cardano—Renaissance scholar, mathematician, occultist, and companion of spirits.