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Wikipedia

Martin Gardner

January 02, 2023

Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914 – May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature – especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton.[4][5] He was also a leading authority on Lewis Carroll.[6] The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll's two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies.[7] He had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and in 1999, MAGIC magazine named him as one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century".[8] He was considered the doyen of American puzzlers.[9] He was a prolific and versatile author, publishing more than 100 books.[10][11]

Martin Gardner
Born(1914-10-21)October 21, 1914
Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
DiedMay 22, 2010(2010-05-22) (aged 95)
Norman, Oklahoma, U.S.
OccupationAuthor
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
GenreRecreational mathematics, puzzles, close-up magic, annotated literary works, debunking
Literary movementScientific skepticism
Notable worksFads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, "Mathematical Games" (Scientific American column), The Annotated Alice, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, The Ambidextrous Universe
Notable awardsLeroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (1987)[1]
George Pólya Award (1999)[2][3]
Allendoerfer Award (1990)
Trevor Evans Award (1998)
Spouse
Charlotte Greenwald
​
(m. 1952)​
Children2
Signature

Gardner was best known for creating and sustaining interest in recreational mathematics – and by extension, mathematics in general – throughout the latter half of the 20th century, principally through his "Mathematical Games" columns.[12][13] These appeared for twenty-five years in Scientific American, and his subsequent books collecting them.[14][15]

Gardner was one of the foremost anti-pseudoscience polemicists of the 20th century.[16] His 1957 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science[17] became a classic and seminal work of the skeptical movement.[18] In 1976, he joined with fellow skeptics to found CSICOP, an organization promoting scientific inquiry and the use of reason in examining extraordinary claims.[19]

He was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.[20]

Biography

 
Gardner as a high school senior, 1932

Youth and education

Martin Gardner was born into a prosperous family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to James Henry Gardner, a prominent petroleum geologist,[21] and his wife, Willie Wilkerson Spiers, a Montessori-trained teacher. His mother taught Martin to read before he started school, reading him The Wizard of Oz, and this began a lifelong interest in the Oz books of L. Frank Baum.[22][23] His fascination with mathematics started in his boyhood when his father gave him a copy of Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks and Conundrums.[24][25]

He attended the University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1936. Early jobs included reporter on the Tulsa Tribune, writer at the University of Chicago Office of Press Relations, and case worker in Chicago's Black Belt for the city's Relief Administration. During World War II, he served for four years in the U.S. Navy as a yeoman on board the destroyer escort USS Pope in the Atlantic. His ship was still in the Atlantic when the war came to an end with the surrender of Japan in August 1945.

After the war, Gardner returned to the University of Chicago.[26] He attended graduate school for a year there, but he did not earn an advanced degree.[1]

In 1950, he wrote an article in the Antioch Review entitled "The Hermit Scientist".[27] It was one of Gardner's earliest articles about junk science, and in 1952 a much-expanded version became his first published book: In the Name of Science: An Entertaining Survey of the High Priests and Cultists of Science, Past and Present.

Early career

In the late 1940s, Gardner moved to New York City and became a writer and editor at Humpty Dumpty magazine, where for eight years he wrote features and stories for it and several other children's magazines.[28] His paper-folding puzzles at that magazine led to his first work at Scientific American.[29] For many decades, Gardner, his wife Charlotte, and their two sons, Jim and Tom, lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, where he earned his living as a freelance author, publishing books with several different publishers, and also publishing hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles.[30] The year 1960 saw the original edition of the best-selling book of his career, The Annotated Alice.[31]

Retirement and death

In 1979, Gardner left Scientific American. He and his wife Charlotte moved to Hendersonville, North Carolina. He continued to write math articles, sending them to The Mathematical Intelligencer, Math Horizons, The College Mathematics Journal, and Scientific American. He also revised some of his older books such as Origami, Eleusis, and the Soma Cube.[32] Charlotte died in 2000 and in 2004 Gardner returned to Oklahoma,[33] where his son, James Gardner, was a professor of education at the University of Oklahoma[1] in Norman. He died there on May 22, 2010.[4] An autobiography – Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner – was published posthumously.[30]

Influence

His depth and clarity will illuminate our world for a long time.[34]

–Persi Diaconis

Martin Gardner had a major impact on mathematics in the second half of the 20th century.[35][36] His column lasted for 25 years and was read avidly by the generation of mathematicians and physicists who grew up in the years 1956 to 1981.[37][38] His writing inspired, directly or indirectly, many who would go on to careers in mathematics, science, and other related endeavors.[39][40][41][42][43][44]

Gardner's admirers included such diverse individuals as W. H. Auden, Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and the entire French literary group known as the Oulipo.[45][46][47][48] Salvador Dalí once sought him out to discuss four-dimensional hypercubes.[49] David Auerbach wrote: "A case can be made, in purely practical terms, for Martin Gardner as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. His popularizations of science and mathematical games in Scientific American, over the 25 years he wrote for them, might have helped create more young mathematicians and computer scientists than any other single factor prior to the advent of the personal computer."[50] Colm Mulcahy described him as "without doubt the best friend mathematics ever had."[51]

Gardner's column has been credited with introducing the public to works and problems that have become mainstays of popular mathematics including the secretary problem, Conway's Game of Life, the Mandelbrot fractal set, Penrose tiles, public-key cryptosystems, and books such as A K Dewdney’s Planiverse and Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach.[52][53][54] Gardner was instrumental in spreading the awareness and understanding of M. C. Escher’s work. Gardner wrote to Escher in 1961 to ask permission to use his Horseman tessellation in an upcoming column about H.S.M. Coxeter. Escher replied, saying that he knew Gardner as author of The Annotated Alice, which had been sent to Escher by Coxeter. The correspondence led to Gardner introducing the previously unknown Escher's art to the world.[51]

His writing was credited as both broad and deep.[55][56][57] Noam Chomsky once wrote, "Martin Gardner's contribution to contemporary intellectual culture is unique – in its range, its insight, and understanding of hard questions that matter."[46][58] Gardner repeatedly alerted the public (and other mathematicians) to recent discoveries in mathematics–recreational and otherwise. In addition to introducing many first-rate puzzles and topics such as Penrose tiles[59] and Conway's Game of Life,[60] he was equally adept at writing columns about traditional mathematical topics such as knot theory, Fibonacci numbers, Pascal's triangle, the Möbius strip, transfinite numbers, four-dimensional space, Zeno's paradoxes, Fermat's Last Theorem, and the four-color problem.[50][61]

Gardner set a new high standard for writing about mathematics.[62][63][64][65][66] In a 2004 interview he said, "I go up to calculus, and beyond that I don't understand any of the papers that are being written. I consider that that was an advantage for the type of column I was doing because I had to understand what I was writing about, and that enabled me to write in such a way that an average reader could understand what I was saying. If you are writing popularly about math, I think it's good not to know too much math."[1] John Horton Conway called him "the most learned man I have ever met."[45]

Gardner's mathematical grapevine

He had carried on incredibly interesting exchanges with hundreds of mathematicians, as well as with artists and polymaths such as Maurits Escher and Piet Hein.[1]

– AMS Notices

Gardner maintained an extensive network of experts and amateurs with whom he regularly exchanged information and ideas.[67] Doris Schattschneider would later term this circle of collaborators "Gardner's mathematical grapevine" or "MG2".[68][69]

Gardner's role as a hub of this network helped facilitate several introductions that led to further fruitful collaborations.[70] Mathematicians Conway, Berlekamp, and Guy, who met as a result of Gardner's influence, would go on to write Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, a foundational book in combinatorial game theory that Gardner championed.[71] Gardner also introduced Conway to Benoit Mandelbrot because he knew of their mutual interest in Penrose tiles.[72][73] Gardner's network was also responsible for introducing Doris Schattschneider and Marjorie Rice, who worked together to document the newly discovered pentagon tilings.[67][74]

Gardner credited his network with generating further material for his columns: "When I first started the column, I was not in touch with any mathematicians, and gradually mathematicians who were creative in the field found out about the column and began corresponding with me. So my most interesting columns were columns based on the material I got from them, so I owe them a big debt of gratitude."[68]

Gardner prepared each of his columns in a painstaking and scholarly fashion and conducted copious correspondence to be sure that everything was fact-checked for mathematical accuracy.[75] Communication was often by postcard or telephone and Gardner kept meticulous notes of everything, typically on index cards.[76] Archives of some of his correspondence stored at Stanford University occupy some 63 linear feet of shelf space.[77] This correspondence led to columns about the rep-tiles and pentominos of Solomon W. Golomb; the space filling curves of Bill Gosper;[78] the aperiodic tiles of Roger Penrose; the Game of Life invented by John H. Conway; the superellipse and the Soma cube of Piet Hein; the trapdoor functions of Diffie, Hellman, and Merkle; the flexagons of Stone, Tuckerman, Feynman, and Tukey; the geometrical delights in a book by H. S. M. Coxeter; the game of Hex invented by Piet Hein and John Nash; Tutte's account of squaring the square; and many other topics.

The wide array of mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, philosophers, magicians, artists, writers, and other influential thinkers who can be counted as part of Gardner's mathematical grapevine includes:[68][79][61][80][81][45][82][42][67]

Mathematical Games column

Further information: List of Martin Gardner Mathematical Games columns

I just play all the time and am fortunate enough to get paid for it.

– Martin Gardner, 1998

For over a quarter century Gardner wrote a monthly column on the subject of recreational mathematics for Scientific American. It all began with his free-standing article on hexaflexagons which ran in the December 1956 issue.[72][47] Flexagons became a bit of a fad and soon people all over New York City were making them. Gerry Piel, the SA publisher at the time, asked Gardner, "Is there enough similar material to this to make a regular feature?" Gardner said he thought so. The January 1957 issue contained his first column, entitled "Mathematical Games".[30] Almost 300 more columns were to follow.[1]

The "Mathematical Games" column became the most popular feature of the magazine and was the first thing that many readers turned to.[83] In September 1977 Scientific American acknowledged the prestige and popularity of Gardner's column by moving it from the back to the very front of the magazine.[84] It ran from 1956 to 1981 with sporadic columns afterwards and was the first introduction of many subjects to a wider audience, notably:[85]

 
Solomon Golomb's Polyominoes were among the many recreational mathematics topics featured by Gardner in his column. The 35 hexominoes are depicted.

Ironically, Gardner had problems learning calculus and never took a mathematics course after high school. While editing Humpty Dumpty's Magazine he constructed many paper folding puzzles. At a magic show in 1956 fellow magician Royal Vale Heath introduced Gardner to the intricately folded paper shapes known as flexagons and steered him to the four Princeton University professors who had invented and investigated their mathematical properties. The subsequent article Gardner wrote on hexaflexagons led directly to the column.[30]

Gardner's son Jim once asked him what was his favorite puzzle, and Gardner answered almost immediately: "The monkey and the coconuts".[86] It had been the subject of his April 1958 Games column and in 2001 he chose to make it the first chapter of his "best of" collection, The Colossal Book of Mathematics.[87]

In the 1980s "Mathematical Games" began to appear only irregularly. Other authors began to share the column, and the June 1986 issue saw the final installment under that title. In 1981, on Gardner's retirement from Scientific American, the column was replaced by Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas", a name that is an anagram of "Mathematical Games".

Virtually all of the games columns were collected in book form starting in 1959 with The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles & Diversions.[88] Over the next four decades fourteen more books followed.[23] Donald Knuth called them the canonical books.[89][90]

Pseudoscience and skepticism

Martin Gardner is the single brightest beacon defending rationality and good science against the mysticism and anti-intellectualism that surround us.[32]

– Stephen Jay Gould

Gardner was an uncompromising critic of fringe science. His book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952, revised 1957) launched the modern skeptical movement.[26] It debunked dubious movements and theories[91] including Fletcherism, Lamarckism, food faddism, Dowsing Rods, Charles Fort, Rudolf Steiner, Dianetics, the Bates method for improving eyesight, Einstein deniers, the Flat Earth theory, the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria, Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, the reincarnation of Bridey Murphy, Wilhelm Reich's orgone theory, the spontaneous generation of life, extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis, homeopathy, phrenology, palmistry, graphology, and numerology. This book and his subsequent efforts (Science: Good, Bad and Bogus, 1981; Order and Surprise, 1983, Gardner's Whys & Wherefores, 1989, etc.) provoked a lot of criticism from the advocates of alternative science and New Age philosophy;[92] he kept up running dialogues (both public and private) with many of them for decades.[26]

In a review of Science: Good, Bad and Bogus, Stephen Jay Gould called Gardner "The Quack Detector", a writer who "expunge[d] nonsense" and in so doing had "become a priceless national resource."[93]

In 1976 Gardner joined with fellow skeptics philosopher Paul Kurtz, psychologist Ray Hyman, sociologist Marcello Truzzi, and stage magician James Randi to found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). Intellectuals including astronomer Carl Sagan, author and biochemist Isaac Asimov, psychologist B. F. Skinner, and journalist Philip J. Klass became fellows of the program. From 1983 to 2002 he wrote a monthly column called "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" (originally "Notes of a Psi-Watcher") for Skeptical Inquirer, that organization's monthly magazine.[94] These columns have been collected in five books starting with The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher in 1988.[95]

Gardner was a relentless critic of self-proclaimed Israeli psychic Uri Geller and wrote two satirical booklets about him in the 1970s using the pen name "Uriah Fuller" in which he explained how such purported psychics do their seemingly impossible feats such as mentally bending spoons and reading minds.[96]

Martin Gardner continued to criticize junk science throughout his life–and he was fearless. His targets included not just safe subjects like astrology and UFO sightings, but topics such as chiropractic, vegetarianism, Madame Blavatsky, creationism, Scientology, the Laffer curve, Christian Science, and the Hutchins-Adler Great Books Movement.[50] The last thing he wrote in the spring of 2010 (a month before his death) was an article excoriating the "dubious medical opinions and bogus science" of Oprah Winfrey – particularly her support for the thoroughly discredited theory that vaccinations cause autism; it went on to bemoan the "needless deaths of children" that such notions are likely to cause.[97]

Skeptical Inquirer named him one of the Ten Outstanding Skeptics of the Twentieth Century.[98] In 2010 he was posthumously honored with an award for his contributions in the skeptical field from the Independent Investigations Group.[99] In 1982 the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry awarded Gardner its In Praise of Reason Award for his "heroic efforts in defense of reason and the dignity of the skeptical attitude",[100] and in 2011 it added Gardner to its Pantheon of Skeptics.[101]

Magic

Card magic, and magic in general, owe a far greater debt to Martin Gardner than most conjurors realize.[102]

–Stephen Minch

Martin Gardner held a lifelong fascination with magic and illusion that began when his father demonstrated a trick to him that seemed to violate physical laws.[103] He wrote for a magic magazine in high school and worked in a department store demonstrating magic tricks while he was at the University of Chicago.[104] Gardner's first published writing (at the age of fifteen) was a magic trick in The Sphinx, the official magazine of the Society of American Magicians.[105] He focused mainly on micromagic (table or close-up magic) and, from the 1930s on, published a significant number of original contributions to this secretive field. Magician Joe M. Turner said, The Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic, which Gardner wrote in 1985, "is guaranteed to show up in any poll of magicians' favorite magic books."[106][107] His first magic book for the general public, Mathematics, Magic and Mystery (Dover, 1956), is still considered a classic in the field.[105] He was well known for his innovative tapping and spelling effects, with and without playing cards, and was most proud of the effect he called the "Wink Change".[108]

Many of Gardner's lifelong friends were magicians.[109] These included William Simon who introduced Gardner to Charlotte Greenwald, whom he married in 1952, Dai Vernon, Jerry Andrus, statistician Persi Diaconis, and polymath Raymond Smullyan. Gardner considered fellow magician James Randi his closest friend. Diaconis and Smullyan like Gardner straddled the two worlds of mathematics and magic.[61] Mathematics and magic were frequently intertwined in Gardner's work.[110] One of his earliest books, Mathematics, Magic and Mystery (1956), was about mathematically based magic tricks.[104] Mathematical magic tricks were often featured in his "Mathematical Games" column–for example, his August 1962 column was titled "A variety of diverting tricks collected at a fictitious convention of magicians." From 1998 to 2002 he wrote a monthly column on magic tricks called "Trick of the Month" in The Physics Teacher, a journal published by the American Association of Physics Teachers.[111]

In 1999 Magic magazine named Gardner one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century".[8] In 2005 he received a 'Lifetime Achievement Fellowship' from the Academy of Magical Arts.[112] The last work to be published during his lifetime was a magic trick in the May 2010 issue of Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics.[105]

Theism and religion

I am a philosophical theist. I believe in a personal God, and I believe in an afterlife, and I believe in prayer, but I don't believe in any established religion. This is called philosophical theism. ... Philosophical theism is entirely emotional. As Kant said, he destroyed pure reason to make room for faith.[113]

– Martin Gardner, 2008

Gardner was raised as a Methodist (his mother was very religious) but rejected established religion as an adult.[22] He considered himself a philosophical theist and a fideist.[113] He believed in a personal God, in an afterlife, and prayer, but rejected established religion. Nevertheless, he had abiding fascination with religious belief. In his autobiography, he stated: "When many of my fans discovered that I believed in God and even hoped for an afterlife, they were shocked and dismayed ... I do not mean the God of the Bible, especially the God of the Old Testament, or any other book that claims to be divinely inspired. For me God is a "Wholly Other" transcendent intelligence, impossible for us to understand. He or she is somehow responsible for our universe and capable of providing, how I have no inkling, an afterlife."[114]

Gardner described his own belief as philosophical theism inspired by the works of philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. While eschewing systematic religious doctrine, he retained a belief in God, asserting that this belief cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by reason or science.[115] At the same time, he was skeptical of claims that any god has communicated with human beings through spoken or telepathic revelation or through miracles in the natural world.[116] Gardner has been quoted as saying that he regarded parapsychology and other research into the paranormal as tantamount to "tempting God" and seeking "signs and wonders". He stated that while he would expect tests on the efficacy of prayers to be negative, he would not rule out a priori the possibility that as yet unknown paranormal forces may allow prayers to influence the physical world.[117]

Gardner wrote repeatedly about what public figures such as Robert Maynard Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, and William F. Buckley, Jr. believed and whether their beliefs were logically consistent. In some cases, he attacked prominent religious figures such as Mary Baker Eddy on the grounds that their claims are unsupportable. His semi-autobiographical novel The Flight of Peter Fromm depicts a traditionally Protestant Christian man struggling with his faith, examining 20th century scholarship and intellectual movements and ultimately rejecting Christianity while remaining a theist.[115]

Gardner said that he suspected that the fundamental nature of human consciousness may not be knowable or discoverable, unless perhaps a physics more profound than ("underlying") quantum mechanics is some day developed. In this regard, he said, he was an adherent of the "New Mysterianism".[118] His philosophical views in general are described and defended in his book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (1983, revised 1999).[119]

Annotated works

Gardner was considered a leading authority on Lewis Carroll. His annotated version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, explaining the many mathematical riddles, wordplay, and literary references found in the Alice books, was first published as The Annotated Alice (Clarkson Potter, 1960). Sequels were published with new annotations as More Annotated Alice (Random House, 1990), and finally as The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (Norton, 1999), combining notes from the earlier editions and new material.[120] The original book arose when Gardner found the Alice books "sort of frightening" when he was young, but found them fascinating as an adult.[121] He felt that someone ought to annotate them, and suggested to a publisher that Bertrand Russell be asked; when the publisher was unable to get past Russell's secretary, Gardner was asked to take on the project himself.[122]

There had long been annotated books written by scholars for other scholars, but Gardner was the first to write such a work for the general public,[123] and soon many other writers followed his lead.[124][125] Gardner himself went on to produce annotated editions of G. K. Chesterton's The Innocence Of Father Brown and The Man Who Was Thursday, as well as of celebrated poems including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Casey at the Bat, The Night Before Christmas, and The Hunting of the Snark.[109]

Novels and short stories

Gardner wrote two novels. He was a perennial fan of the Oz books written by L. Frank Baum,[126] and in 1988 he published Visitors from Oz, based on the characters in Baum's various Oz books. Gardner was a founding member of the International Wizard of Oz Club, and winner of its 1971 L. Frank Baum Memorial Award. His other novel was The Flight of Peter Fromm (1973), which reflected his lifelong fascination with religious belief and the problem of faith.[127]

His short stories were collected in The No-Sided Professor and Other Tales of Fantasy, Humor, Mystery, and Philosophy (1987).[1]

Autobiography

At the age of 95 Gardner wrote Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner. He was living in a one-room apartment in Norman, Oklahoma and, as was his custom, wrote it on a typewriter and edited it using scissors and rubber cement.[81] He took the title from a poem, a so-called grook, by his good friend Piet Hein,[128] which perfectly expresses Gardner's abiding sense of mystery and wonder about existence.[129]

We glibly talk
 of nature's laws
but do things have
 a natural cause?

Black earth turned into
 yellow crocus
is undiluted
 hocus-pocus.

Word play

Gardner's interest in wordplay led him to conceive of a magazine on recreational linguistics. In 1967 he pitched the idea to Greenwood Periodicals and nominated Dmitri Borgmann as editor.[130] The resulting journal, Word Ways, carried many of his articles; as of 2013 it was still publishing his submissions posthumously. He also wrote a "Puzzle Tale" column for Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1977 to 1986. Gardner was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club, the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers.[131]

Pen names

Gardner often used pen names. In 1952, while working for the children's magazine Humpty Dumpty, he contributed stories written by "Humpty Dumpty Jnr". For several years starting in 1953 he was a managing editor of Polly Pigtails, a magazine for young girls, and also wrote under that name. His Annotated Casey at the Bat (1967) included a parody of the poem, attributed to "Nitram Rendrag" (his name spelled backwards). Using the pen name "Uriah Fuller", he wrote two books attacking the alleged psychic Uri Geller. In later years, Gardner often wrote parodies of his favorite poems under the name "Armand T. Ringer", an anagram of his name.[132] In 1983 one George Groth panned Gardner's book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener in the New York Review of Books. Only in the last line of the review was it revealed that George Groth was Martin Gardner himself.[119]

In his January 1960 "Mathematical Games" column, Gardner introduced the fictitious "Dr. Matrix" and wrote about him often over the next two decades. Dr. Matrix was not exactly a pen name, although Gardner did pretend that everything in these columns came from the fertile mind of the good doctor. Then in 1979 Dr. Matrix himself published an article in the quite respectable Two-Year College Mathematics Journal.[133] It was called Martin Gardner: Defending the Honor of the Human Mind and contained a biography of Gardner and a history of his "Mathematical Games" column. It would be a further decade before Martin published an article in such a mathematics journal under his own name.[132]

Philosophy of mathematics

Gardner was known for his sometimes controversial philosophy of mathematics.[134] He wrote negative reviews of The Mathematical Experience by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh and What Is Mathematics, Really? by Hersh, both of which were critical of aspects of mathematical Platonism, and the first of which was well received by the mathematical community. While Gardner was often perceived as a hard-core Platonist, his reviews demonstrated some formalist tendencies.[citation needed] Gardner maintained that his views are widespread among mathematicians, but Hersh has countered that in his experience as a professional mathematician and speaker, this is not the case.[135]

Mathematics education

In the August 1998 edition of Scientific American, Gardner wrote his final piece for Scientific American titled, "A Quarter Century of Recreational Mathematics."[136] In it he said, "For 40 years I have done my best to convince educators that recreational math should be incorporated into the standard curriculum. It should be regularly introduced as a way to interest young students in the wonders of mathematics. So far, though, movement in this direction has been glacial." He recalls how as a young boy a math teacher had scolded him for working on a bit of recreation mathematics and laments at how wrongheaded this attitude is. He notes that the magazine Mathematics Teacher published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and specially dedicated to improving mathematics instruction for grades 8–14,[137] often has articles on recreational topics but that most teachers do not use them.[80]

Legacy and awards

The numerous awards Gardner received include:[138]

The Mathematical Association of America has established a Martin Gardner Lecture to be given each year on the last day of MAA MathFest, the summer meeting of the MAA. The first annual lecture, Recreational Mathematics and Computer Science: Martin Gardner's Influence on Research, was given by Erik Demaine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Saturday, August 3, 2019, at MathFest in Cincinnati.[142] The 2021 lecture Surprising discoveries of three amateur mathematicians: M.C. Escher, Marjorie Rice, and Rinus Roelofs was virtual and was given by Doris Schattschneider.[143]

There are eight bricks honoring Gardner in the Paul R. Halmos Commemorative Walk, installed by The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) at their Conference Center in Washington, D.C.[144] Gardner has an Erdös number of 1.[145]

Gathering 4 Gardner

Main article: Gathering 4 Gardner

Martin Gardner continued to write up until his death in 2010, and his community of fans grew to span several generations.[32] Moreover, his influence was so broad that many of his fans had little or no contact with each other.[146] This led Atlanta entrepreneur and puzzle collector Tom Rodgers to the idea of hosting a weekend gathering celebrating Gardner's contributions to recreational mathematics, rationality, magic, puzzles, literature, and philosophy.[45] Although Gardner was famously shy, and would usually decline an honor if it required him to make a personal appearance, Rogers persuaded him to attend the first such "Gathering 4 Gardner" (G4G), held in Atlanta in January 1993.[147]

A second such get-together was held in 1996, again with Gardner in attendance. A video was made for the CBC Television program The Nature of Things with David Suzuki.[148] It featured Gardner along with many members of his circle and was called "Martin Gardner: Mathemagician" and broadcast on March 14, 1996. At this point Rogers and his friends decided to make the gathering a regular, bi-annual event. Participants over the years have ranged from long-time Gardner friends such as John Horton Conway, Elwyn Berlekamp, Ronald Graham, Donald Coxeter, and Richard K. Guy, to newcomers like mathematician and mathematical artist Erik Demaine, mathematical video maker Vi Hart, and Fields Medalist Manjul Bhargava.[32][149]

The program at the "G4G" meetings presents topics which Gardner had written about. The first gathering in 1993 was G4G1 and the 1996 event was G4G2. Since then it has been in even-numbered years, so far always in Atlanta.[150] The 2018 event was G4G13.[151]

Bibliography

Main article: Martin Gardner bibliography

In a publishing career spanning 80 years (1930-2010),[152] Gardner authored or edited over 100 books and countless articles, columns and reviews.

All Gardner's works were non-fiction except for two novels – The Flight of Peter Fromm (1973) and Visitors from Oz (1998) – and two collections of short pieces – The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix (1967, 1985) and The No-Sided Professor (1987).

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g AMS Notices (2004)
  2. ^ "MAA Writing Awards Presented" (PDF). Notices of the AMS. 47 (10): 1282. November 2000. (PDF) from the original on 2014-07-12.
  3. ^ Gardner, Martin (January 1999). "The Asymmetric Propeller" (PDF). The College Mathematics Journal. 30 (1): 18–22. doi:10.2307/2687198. JSTOR 2687198. (PDF) from the original on 2014-03-04.
  4. ^ a b Martin (2010)
  5. ^ Singmaster, D. (2010) "Obituary: Martin Gardner (1914–2010)" Nature 465(7300), 884.
  6. ^ Kindley (2015): When it comes to explanations of Carroll’s books, no one has yet improved on the work of Gardner.
  7. ^ Buffalo Public Library: The annotated Alice : Alice's adventures in wonderland & through the looking-glass 2016-06-24 at the Wayback Machine: "Martin Gardner's groundbreaking work went on to sell over a million copies, establishing the modest math genius as one of our foremost Carroll scholars."
  8. ^ a b Top 10 Martin Gardner Books 2016-03-25 at the Wayback Machine, by Colm Mulcahy, Huffington Post Books, October 28, 2014
  9. ^ Costello (1988): p. 114.
  10. ^ England (2014): Even apart from mathematics and puzzles, Gardner's output was staggering.
  11. ^ "Martin Gardner dies at 95; prolific mathematics columnist for Scientific American" by Thomas H. Maugh, Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2010
  12. ^ AMS Notices (2011): "Martin Gardner was a gem. There is absolutely no question that he, more than anyone else in the world, was responsible for turning people of all ages on to the pleasures of mathematical recreations." —Ronald L. Graham
  13. ^ Case 2014: Gardner is credited with the rebirth of recreational mathematics in the U.S.
  14. ^ Martin (2010): "His mathematical writings intrigued a generation of mathematicians."
  15. ^ Bellos (2010): "He became a kind of father figure to a generation of young mathematicians, who corresponded with him. Such was Gardner's influence between the late 1950s and 1980s that it would be hard to find a professional mathematician from those years who does not cite him as an inspiration."
  16. ^ "Martin Gardner – Mathematician". Martin Gardner Home Site. Gathering 4 Gardner. 2014. from the original on November 18, 2016. Retrieved October 28, 2016.
  17. ^ originally published in 1952 as In the Name of Science: An Entertaining Survey of the High Priests and Cultists of Science, Past and Present
  18. ^ Shermer, Michael (2001). The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense. Oxford University Press. p. 50. Retrieved May 20, 2016. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science [is] still in print and arguably the skeptic classic of the past half-century.
  19. ^ . Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Archived from the original on 2016-11-12. Retrieved 2016-10-28.
  20. ^ Reviews by and about Martin Gardner The New York Review of Books: 1973 to 1998
  21. ^ James Gardner later became the 8th President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
  22. ^ a b Martin Gardner Famous Scientists
  23. ^ a b England (2014)
  24. ^ Suzuki (1996) at 17:20
  25. ^ MacTutor
  26. ^ a b c Shermer (1997)
  27. ^ Gardner, Martin, "The Hermit Scientist", Antioch Review, Winter 1950–1951, pp. 447–457.
  28. ^ Yam, Philip (December 1995) Profile: Martin Gardner, the Mathematical Gamester (1914–2010) 2018-05-11 at the Wayback Machine Scientific American
  29. ^ Gardner, Martin; Berlekamp, Elwyn R.; Rodgers, Tom (1999). The mathemagician and pied puzzler: a collection in tribute to Martin Gardner. A K Peters, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-56881-075-1.
  30. ^ a b c d Gardner, Martin (2013)
  31. ^ Burstein (2011)
  32. ^ a b c d Richards (2014)
  33. ^ Albers (2008)
  34. ^ Princeton University Press: Reviews of Undiluted Hocus-Pocus
  35. ^ Princeton University Press: Reviews of Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: "Martin Gardner occupies a special place in twentieth-century mathematics. More than any other single individual, he inspired a generation of young people to study math."–Barry Arthur Cipra
  36. ^ Bellos (2010): He was not a mathematician – he never even took a maths class after high school – yet Martin Gardner, who has died aged 95, was arguably the most influential and inspirational figure in mathematics in the second half of the last century.
  37. ^ Mulcahy (2014): It's been said that he had a million readers there at his peak.
  38. ^ Malkevitch (2014): Martin Gardner's columns and books have been referenced by huge numbers of research papers that involve mathematics.
  39. ^ Hofstadter (2010): Many of today's most influential mathematicians and physicists, magicians and philosophers, writers and computer scientists, owe their direction to Martin Gardner. They may not even be aware of how big a role he played in their development.
  40. ^ Bhargava (2018): Eventually, when I was around 12 years old, through my puzzle explorations I of course also had the good fortune of discovering the works of Martin Gardner. They inspired me a huge amount, and gave me something far more enjoyable to do than go to math class! I also read other recreational mathematics and puzzle books, such as those of Raymond Smullyan, and all of these works definitely had a great influence on me as a playing and playful mathematician.
  41. ^ Antonick (2014): Martin Gardner was well known for inspiring generations of students to become professional mathematicians.
  42. ^ a b Antonick (2014): "Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American was one of the two things that, above all others, convinced me I wanted to be a mathematician."–Ian Stewart
  43. ^ Demaine (2008) p. ix: Many of today's mathematicians entered this field through Gardner's influence.
  44. ^ Crease (2018): "As a columnist for Scientific American, Gardner inspired generations of physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, puzzle-makers, logicians, magicians and others, including me."
  45. ^ a b c d Mulcahy (2013)
  46. ^ a b Brown (2010)
  47. ^ a b The Economist (2010)
  48. ^ Dirda (2009)
  49. ^ Mulcahy (2017): The surrealist artist was intrigued by Martin's writings on the 4-dimensional cube, or tesseract – which had been a prominent feature of his own 1954 painting Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus).
  50. ^ a b c Auerbach (2013)
  51. ^ a b Mulcahy (2017)
  52. ^ AMS Notices (2011): "Already when he began his monthly series in 1956 and 1957, he was corresponding with the likes of Claude Shannon, John Nash, John Milnor, and David Gale. Later he would receive mail from budding mathematicians John Conway, Persi Diaconis, Jeffrey Shallit, Ron Rivest, et al." –Donald Knuth
  53. ^ Malkevitch (2014): The range of wonderful problems, examples, and theorems that Gardner treated over the years is enormous. They include ideas from geometry, algebra, number theory, graph theory, topology, and knot theory, to name but a few.
  54. ^ Bellos, Alex (2010): I discovered how good [the columns] really were, covering everything from public-key cryptography to superstring theory. He was the first to cover so many breakthroughs.
  55. ^ BBC News (2014): It went a lot further than puzzles – there was substance, depth and a fair share of mystery and wonder in the topics he wrote about.
  56. ^ BBC News (2014): Penrose tiles are a good example of just how 'nontrivial' the consequences of his puzzle column could be. The materials scientist Dan Shechtman actually won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2011 'for the discovery of quasicrystals' – three-dimensional Penrose tiles – in some aluminium-manganese alloys.
  57. ^ Hofstadter (2010): His approach and his ways of combining ideas are truly unique and truly creative, and, if I dare say so, what Martin Gardner has done is of far greater originality than work that has won many people Nobel Prizes.
  58. ^ MacTutor: Gardner has produced a number of mathematical papers, written with leading mathematicians.
  59. ^ Kullman (1997): Martin Gardner, in his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American presented "for the first time" a description of the Penrose tiles, including many of Conway's results concerning them.
  60. ^ MAA FOCUS (2010): "Another milestone was in late 1970, when Martin’s column introduced the world to John Horton Conway’s Game of Life"–John Derbyshire
  61. ^ a b c Hofstadter (2010)
  62. ^ AMS Notices (2004): "His crystalline prose, always enlightening, never pedantic, set a new standard for high quality mathematical popularization." —Allyn Jackson.
  63. ^ Lister (1995): Martin Gardner's supreme achievement was his ability to communicate difficult and often profound subjects with a few deft, but human strokes of his pen.
  64. ^ Mirsky (2010): "His writing has been valued by generations of professional mathematicians."–Ian Stewart
  65. ^ Teller (2014): "Gardner writes with authority and ease. You trust him to take you wherever he feels like going."
  66. ^ Hofstadter (2010): Martin had a magical touch in writing about math.
  67. ^ a b c Peterson (2014)
  68. ^ a b c Case (2014)
  69. ^ David A. Klarner, editor (1981), "In Praise of Amateurs" in The Mathematical Gardner, Weber & Schmidt, 1981.
  70. ^ Propp (2015): "Before there were search engines, the intellectual world relied on human hubs to serve as repositories of knowledge and connectors of people with common interests who otherwise would not have known one another. Martin Gardner was such a connector. His column was the best mathematical watering hole of its day, and behind the scenes he served as a tireless mathematical match-maker. Gardner was a hub par excellence."
  71. ^ Berlekamp (2014): Partly because of what I had read about them in Martin Gardner’s columns, I was appropriately awestruck in the 1960s when I first met Sol Golomb and then Richard Guy, each of whom had a large influence on my subsequent work. In 1969 Richard introduced me to John Horton Conway, and the three of us immediately began collaborating on a book that eventually became Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays. In the 1970s, I joined Conway in some of his many visits to Gardner’s home on Euclid Avenue, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Gardner soon became an enthusiastic advocate of our book project, and he previewed various snippets of it in his Scientific American columns.
  72. ^ a b Mulcahy (2014)
  73. ^ Gardner (2013) page 144: Conway had been making new discoveries about Penrose tiling, and Mandelbrot was interested because Penrose tiling patterns are fractals.
  74. ^ Cole, K. C. (March 11, 1998), "Beating the Pros to the Punch", Los Angeles Times.
  75. ^ AMS Notices (2011)
  76. ^ BBC News (2014): His secret was a fantastic card index system of his own, going back to the 1930s, stored in shoe boxes.
  77. ^ Stanford University Archives: Gardner (Martin) Papers Online Archive of California
  78. ^ Discrete Geometry, Combinatorics and Graph Theory : Revised selected papers; Jin Akiyama, William Y.C. Chen, Mikio Kano
  79. ^ BBC News (2014)
  80. ^ a b Gardner (1998)
  81. ^ a b Teller (2014)
  82. ^ The Math Factor Podcast Website John H. Conway reminisces on his long friendship and collaboration with Martin Gardner.
  83. ^ Hofstadter (2010): There were thousands of such people spread all around the world – mathematicians, physicists, philosophers, computer scientists, and on and on – who thought of Martin Gardner's column not as merely a feature of that great magazine Scientific American, but as its very heart and soul.
  84. ^ Demaine (2008): p. 24
  85. ^ Adamatzky, A. (Ed.) (2010). Game of Life Cellular Automata ebook, ISBN 1849962170. pp. 15–16, Conway came to New York to meet with Gardner [and] could not believe the amount of interest Gardner's columns on the game of Life had generated.
  86. ^ Antonick, Gary (2013). Martin Gardner’s The Monkey and the Coconuts in Numberplay The New York Times:, October 7, 2013
  87. ^ Gardner, Martin The Colossal Book of Mathematics: Classic Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problems (2001), W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN 0-393-02023-1
  88. ^ Martin Gardner: Mathematical Games Collections 2016-06-29 at the Wayback Machine by David Langford
  89. ^ The New Martin Gardner Mathematical Library 2016-12-26 at the Wayback Machine Cambridge University Press
  90. ^ The Canon: The fifteen "Mathematical Games" books at martin-gardner.org 2015-02-16 at the Wayback Machine
  91. ^ There's One Born Every Minute review by Ed Regis, The New York Times, June 4, 2000; "Martin Gardner's 1957 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science is the classic put-down of pseudoscience. Nobody who read it will soon forget its stellar roll call of mid-20th-century cranks and crackpots"
  92. ^ Friedel (2018): This book and his subsequent efforts earned him a wealth of detractors and antagonists in the fields of “fringe science” and New Age philosophy.
  93. ^ Gould (1982): In this climate, beleaguered rationalism needs its skilled debaters – writers who can combine wit, penetrating analysis, sharp prose, and sweet reason into an expansive view that expunges nonsense without stifling innovation, and that presents the excitement and humanity of science in a positive way. ... For more than thirty years, Martin Gardner has played this largely thankless role with tireless efficiency. He is more than a mere individual fighting a set of personal battles; he has become a priceless national resource.
  94. ^ Articles by Martin Gardner: 115 Results Skeptical Inquirer
  95. ^ Prometheus Books The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher by Martin Gardner
  96. ^ "Linkapedia Visualarts Discover more about Uriah Fuller". linkapedia-visualarts.com.
  97. ^ Oprah Winfrey: Bright (but Gullible) Billionaire 2016-05-01 at the Wayback Machine Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 2010
  98. ^
  99. ^ About the IIG Awards Independent Investigations Group
  100. ^ "CSICOP Council in Atlanta: Police Psychics, Local Groups". The Skeptical Inquirer. 7 (3): 13. 1983.
  101. ^ The Pantheon of Skeptics Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
  102. ^ Martin Gardner's Magic Influence 2016-05-21 at the Wayback Machine at martin-gardner.org
  103. ^ Costello (1988) p. 115: His father had taught him his first trick, the "Knife and Paper" trick, a bit of legerdemain involving a butter knife with bits of paper on it.
  104. ^ a b Bellos (2010)
  105. ^ a b c Gathering 4 Gardner (2014)
  106. ^ Demaine (2008) p. 12
  107. ^ Reviews of Martin Gardner's Impromptu 2017-03-21 at the Wayback Machine The Miracle Factory
  108. ^ Demaine (2008): pp. 4–5
  109. ^ a b Lister (1995)
  110. ^ from Dover Publications: Mathematics, Magic and Mystery 2016-05-06 at the Wayback Machine "As a rule, we simply accept these tricks and 'magic' without recognizing that they are really demonstrations of strict laws based on probability, sets, number theory, topology, and other branches of mathematics."
  111. ^ The Dover Math and Science Newsletter 2015-05-03 at the Wayback Machine May 16, 2011
  112. ^ . The Academy of Magical Arts. Archived from the original on 2016-11-20. Retrieved 2017-12-24.
  113. ^ a b Carpenter, Alexander (17 October 2008). "Interview: Martin Gardner on Philosophical Theism, Adventists and Price". Spectrum. from the original on July 13, 2016. Retrieved December 21, 2019.
  114. ^ Gardner (2013) p. 191
  115. ^ a b Groth (1983)
  116. ^ Martin Gardner: 1914–2010: Chris French mourns the passing of Martin Gardner, The Guardian, May 25, 2010
  117. ^ The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener by Martin Gardner, Quill, 1983, pp. 238–239
  118. ^ by Kendrick Frazier, Skeptical Inquirer Volume 22.2, March/April 1998
  119. ^ a b "Gardner's Whys" in The Night is Large, chapter 40, pp. 481–87.
  120. ^ Dirda (2009): With this book Gardner virtually launched the entire mini-genre of annotated classics.
  121. ^ Jan Susina. Conversation with Martin Gardner: Annotator of Wonderland. The Five Owls. Jan./Feb. 2000. 62–64.
  122. ^ Alice Still Lives Here by Michael Sims, Nashville Scene, July 06, 2000
  123. ^ Richards (2018)
  124. ^ Kindley (2015): Just as importantly, though, The Annotated Alice gave rise to a new popular genre.
  125. ^ Richards (2018): The look and feel was entirely due to Martin Gardner.
  126. ^ MacTutor: My mother read The Wizard of Oz to me when I was a little boy, and I looked over her shoulder as she read it. I learned how to read that way.
  127. ^ Brown (2010): Faith was also the subject of his 1973 semi-autobiographical novel, "The Flight of Peter Fromm," in which the title character and his atheist professor of divinity grapple for decades with questions about God.
  128. ^ Grooks by Piet Hein 2014-10-10 at the Wayback Machine
  129. ^ Undiluted Hocus-Pocus, Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0691159911, Reviewed by Andy Magid
  130. ^ Eckler, A. Ross (2010) "Look Back!" Word Ways: Vol 43: Issue 3, Article 6
  131. ^ Don Albers' interview of Gardner, Part 4: The Trap Door Spiders 2008-11-19 at the Wayback Machine
  132. ^ a b Top 10 Martin Gardner Alter Egos 2017-03-17 at the Wayback Machine at martin-gardner.org
  133. ^ Matrix, Irving Joshua (1979). Martin Gardner: Defending the Honor of the Human Mind, The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Sep., 1979), pp. 227–232.
  134. ^ Skeptic Martin Gardner Dies 2015-10-02 at the Wayback Machine by Loren Coleman, CryptoZoo News, May 23, 2010
  135. ^ Hersh, Reuben (31 October 1997). "Re: Martin Gardner book review". Foundations of Mathematics mailing list. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  136. ^ A Quarter Century of Recreational Mathematics, by Martin Gardner Scientific American blog on May 29, 2010
  137. ^ Mathematics Teacher website National Council of Mathematics Teachers
  138. ^ Martin Gardner's Awards 2016-03-18 at the Wayback Machine
  139. ^ JPL Small-Body Database Browser 2018-07-06 at the Wayback Machine 2587 Gardner (1980 OH)
  140. ^ The Mathematical Association of America's Trevor Evans Awards 2017-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
  141. ^ Magic magazine, Jun 1999, page 60
  142. ^ MAA MathFest 2019 Invited Addresses
  143. ^ Doris Schattschneider MAA: 2021 Martin Gardner Lecturer
  144. ^ Brick Installation Honors Martin Gardner 2017-06-28 at the Wayback Machine MAA New release
  145. ^ John Conway Reminiscences about Dr. Matrix and Bourbaki by Dana Richards & Collm Mulcahy, Scientific American, October 1, 2014
  146. ^ MAA FOCUS (2010): "His heritage goes beyond essays and books; he left a community of magicians, mathematicians, and wits carrying things forward and delighting in it all."–Peter Renz
  147. ^ Robert P. Crease, Gathering for Gardner 2018-03-28 at the Wayback Machine, The Wall Street Journal, p. W11, 2 April 2010
  148. ^ Suzuki (1996)
  149. ^ Gathering 4 Gardner's G4G13 Presents "Poetry, Drumming, and Mathematics" with Professor Manjul Bhargava The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 15, 2018
  150. ^ Crease (2018)
  151. ^ G4G13 Information 2018-05-20 at the Wayback Machine gathering4gardner.org
  152. ^ Gardner's first publication at age 16 was a magic trick in the periodical The Sphinx.

Sources

  • Albers, Don (2008). The Martin Gardner Interview (in five parts) with MAA Editorial Director Don Albers, fifteeneightyfour: the blog of Cambridge University Press
  • AMS Notices (2004). Interview with Martin Gardner Notices of the AMS, Vol. 52, No. 6, June/July 2005, pp. 602–611
  • AMS Notices (2011). Notices of the AMS, Vol. 58, No. 3, March 2011, p. 420
  • Antonick, Gary (2014). The New York Times, October 27, 2014
  • Auerbach, David (2013). A Delville of a Tolkar: Martin Gardner’s “Undiluted Hocus-Pocus” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 4, 2013
  • BBC News (2014). Martin Gardner, puzzle master extraordinaire BBC News Magazine, October 21, 2014
  • Bhargava, Manjul (2018). An Interview with Manjul Bhargava with Colm Mulcahy, G4G13, April 2018
  • Bellos, Alex (2010). Martin Gardner obituary The Guardian, May 27, 2010
  • Berlekamp, Elwyn R (2014). The Mathematical Legacy of Martin Gardner Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), September 2, 2014
  • Berlekamp, Elwyn R., John H. Conway, and Richard K. Guy (1982). Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays Academic Press, ISBN 0120911507.
  • Brown, Emma (2010). Martin Gardner, prolific math and science writer, dies at 95 The Washington Post, May 24, 2010
  • Burstein, Mark, ed. (2011). A Bouquet for the Gardner: Martin Gardner Remembered. New York: The Lewis Carroll Society of North America. ISBN 978-0-930326-17-3.
  • Case, James (2014). Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Grapevine By James Case, SIAM News, April 1, 2014
  • Costello, Matthew J. (1988). The Greatest Puzzles of All Time New York: Prentice Hall Press, ISBN 0133649369
  • Crease, Robert P (2018). Martin Gardner would have smiled Physics World: Education and Outreach Blog, 16 April 2018
  • Demaine (2008). Edited by Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Tom Rodgers. A lifetime of puzzles : a collection of puzzles in honor of Martin Gardner's 90th birthday A K Peters: Wellesley, MA, ISBN 1568812450
  • Dirda, Michael (2009). Book review by Michael Dirda: 'When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish' by Martin Gardner The Washington Post, October 22, 2009
  • The Economist (2010). Martin Gardner obituary Jun 3rd 2010
  • England, Jason (2014). The puzzling life of Martin Gardner Cosmos Magazine, February 24, 2014
  • Friedel, Frederic (2018). Remembering Martin Gardner, Jan 16, 2018
  • Gardner, Martin (1998). A Quarter Century of Recreational Mathematics by Martin Gardner, Scientific American, August 1998
  • Gardner, Martin (2013). Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691159912.
  • Gardner, Martin (2016). The Recreational Mathematics of Piet Hein Piet Hein Website
  • Gathering 4 Gardner (2014). Martin Gardner – Magician
  • Gould, Stephen Jay (1982). The Quack Detector The New York Review of Books, February 4, 1982
  • Groth, George (1983). Review of Gardner’s Game with God The New York Review of Books, December 8, 1983
  • Hofstadter, Douglas (2010). Martin Gardner: A Major Shaping Force in My Life Scientific American, May 24, 2010
  • Klarner, David A. (1998). Mathematical Recreations: A Collection in Honor of Martin Gardner, Dover Publications, New York, pp. 140-166
  • Kindley, Evan (2015). Down the Rabbit Hole: The rise, and rise, of literary annotation By Evan Kindley, The New Republic, September 21, 2015
  • Kullman, David (1997). The Penrose Tiling at Miami University Presented at the Mathematical Association of America Ohio Section Meeting Shawnee State University, October 24, 1997
  • Lister, David (1995). Martin Gardner and Paperfolding British Origami Society, February 15, 1995.
  • MAA FOCUS (2010). Remembering Martin Gardner vol 30 (4), August/September 2010
  • MacTutor (2010). History of Mathematics archive: Martin Gardner
  • Malkevitch, Joseph (2014). Magical Mathematics – A Tribute to Martin Gardner American Mathematical Society, March 2014
  • Martin, Douglas (2010). Martin Gardner, Puzzler and Polymath, Dies at 95 The New York Times, May 23, 2010
  • Martin Gardner – Mathematician (official website)
  • Mirsky, Steve (2010). Scholars and Others Pay Tribute to "Mathematical Games" Columnist Martin Gardner Scientific American, May 24, 2010
  • Mulcahy, Colm (2013). Celebrations of Mind Honor Math’s Best Friend, Martin Gardner Scientific American, October 29, 2013
  • Mulcahy, Colm (2014). The Top 10 Martin Gardner Scientific American Articles Scientific American, October 21, 2014
  • Mulcahy, Colm (2017). Martin Gardner – The Best Friend Mathematics Ever Had The Huffington Post, January 23, 2014
  • Peterson, Ivars (2014). Honoring a Century of Martin Gardner in MAA Focus, the newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America, Vol. 34, No. 5, Oct/Nov 2014
  • Propp, James (2015). Martin Gardner Testimonials Belmont, MA, July 29, 2015
  • Princeton University Press
  • Richards, Dana (2014). Math Games of Martin Gardner Still Spur Innovation by Dana S. Richards & Colm Mulcahy, Scientific American, October 1, 2014
  • Richards, Dana (2018). Martin Gardner, Annotator G4G13, April 2018 – video
  • Shermer, Michael (1997). Michael Shermer interviews Martin Gardner, Skeptic Magazine, Vol 5, No. 2 (1997)
  • Suzuki, David (1996). Mystery and Magic of Mathematics: Martin Gardner and Friends The Nature of Things, March 14, 1996 – video
  • Teller (2014). ‘Undiluted Hocus-Pocus,’ by Martin Gardner The New York Times: Sunday Book Review, January 3, 2014

External links

  • Official website – with Martin Gardner's Awards and Martin Gardner Appreciations
  • Works by and about Martin Gardner at The Center for Inquiry Libraries
  • Martin Gardner at Library of Congress Authorities, with 170 catalog records

January 02, 2023
martin, gardner, october, 1914, 2010, american, popular, mathematics, popular, science, writer, with, interests, also, encompassing, scientific, skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, literature, especially, writings, lewis, carroll, frank, baum, cheste. Martin Gardner October 21 1914 May 22 2010 was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism micromagic philosophy religion and literature especially the writings of Lewis Carroll L Frank Baum and G K Chesterton 4 5 He was also a leading authority on Lewis Carroll 6 The Annotated Alice which incorporated the text of Carroll s two Alice books was his most successful work and sold over a million copies 7 He had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and in 1999 MAGIC magazine named him as one of the 100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century 8 He was considered the doyen of American puzzlers 9 He was a prolific and versatile author publishing more than 100 books 10 11 Martin GardnerBorn 1914 10 21 October 21 1914Tulsa Oklahoma U S DiedMay 22 2010 2010 05 22 aged 95 Norman Oklahoma U S OccupationAuthorAlma materUniversity of ChicagoGenreRecreational mathematics puzzles close up magic annotated literary works debunkingLiterary movementScientific skepticismNotable worksFads and Fallacies in the Name of Science Mathematical Games Scientific American column The Annotated Alice The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener The Ambidextrous UniverseNotable awardsLeroy P Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition 1987 1 George Polya Award 1999 2 3 Allendoerfer Award 1990 Trevor Evans Award 1998 SpouseCharlotte Greenwald m 1952 wbr Children2SignatureMartin GardnerInfluences Plato Kant G K Chesterton William James Charles S Peirce Miguel de Unamuno Rudolf Carnap H G Wells Kurt Godel Henry Dudeney Sam Loyd Bertrand RussellInfluenced Douglas Hofstadter Michael Shermer Donald Knuth Raymond Smullyan Marvin Minsky John Horton Conway Persi Diaconis Ray Hyman James Randi Ronald Graham Dennis Shasha Ian Stewart Erik DemaineGardner was best known for creating and sustaining interest in recreational mathematics and by extension mathematics in general throughout the latter half of the 20th century principally through his Mathematical Games columns 12 13 These appeared for twenty five years in Scientific American and his subsequent books collecting them 14 15 Gardner was one of the foremost anti pseudoscience polemicists of the 20th century 16 His 1957 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science 17 became a classic and seminal work of the skeptical movement 18 In 1976 he joined with fellow skeptics to found CSICOP an organization promoting scientific inquiry and the use of reason in examining extraordinary claims 19 He was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books 20 Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Youth and education 1 2 Early career 1 3 Retirement and death 2 Influence 2 1 Gardner s mathematical grapevine 3 Mathematical Games column 4 Pseudoscience and skepticism 5 Magic 6 Theism and religion 7 Annotated works 8 Novels and short stories 9 Autobiography 10 Word play 11 Pen names 12 Philosophy of mathematics 13 Mathematics education 14 Legacy and awards 15 Gathering 4 Gardner 16 Bibliography 17 See also 18 References 19 Sources 20 External linksBiography Edit Gardner as a high school senior 1932 Youth and education Edit Martin Gardner was born into a prosperous family in Tulsa Oklahoma to James Henry Gardner a prominent petroleum geologist 21 and his wife Willie Wilkerson Spiers a Montessori trained teacher His mother taught Martin to read before he started school reading him The Wizard of Oz and this began a lifelong interest in the Oz books of L Frank Baum 22 23 His fascination with mathematics started in his boyhood when his father gave him a copy of Sam Loyd s Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles Tricks and Conundrums 24 25 He attended the University of Chicago where he earned his bachelor s degree in philosophy in 1936 Early jobs included reporter on the Tulsa Tribune writer at the University of Chicago Office of Press Relations and case worker in Chicago s Black Belt for the city s Relief Administration During World War II he served for four years in the U S Navy as a yeoman on board the destroyer escort USS Pope in the Atlantic His ship was still in the Atlantic when the war came to an end with the surrender of Japan in August 1945 After the war Gardner returned to the University of Chicago 26 He attended graduate school for a year there but he did not earn an advanced degree 1 In 1950 he wrote an article in the Antioch Review entitled The Hermit Scientist 27 It was one of Gardner s earliest articles about junk science and in 1952 a much expanded version became his first published book In the Name of Science An Entertaining Survey of the High Priests and Cultists of Science Past and Present Early career Edit In the late 1940s Gardner moved to New York City and became a writer and editor at Humpty Dumpty magazine where for eight years he wrote features and stories for it and several other children s magazines 28 His paper folding puzzles at that magazine led to his first work at Scientific American 29 For many decades Gardner his wife Charlotte and their two sons Jim and Tom lived in Hastings on Hudson New York where he earned his living as a freelance author publishing books with several different publishers and also publishing hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles 30 The year 1960 saw the original edition of the best selling book of his career The Annotated Alice 31 Retirement and death Edit In 1979 Gardner left Scientific American He and his wife Charlotte moved to Hendersonville North Carolina He continued to write math articles sending them to The Mathematical Intelligencer Math Horizons The College Mathematics Journal and Scientific American He also revised some of his older books such as Origami Eleusis and the Soma Cube 32 Charlotte died in 2000 and in 2004 Gardner returned to Oklahoma 33 where his son James Gardner was a professor of education at the University of Oklahoma 1 in Norman He died there on May 22 2010 4 An autobiography Undiluted Hocus Pocus The Autobiography of Martin Gardner was published posthumously 30 Influence EditHis depth and clarity will illuminate our world for a long time 34 Persi Diaconis Martin Gardner had a major impact on mathematics in the second half of the 20th century 35 36 His column lasted for 25 years and was read avidly by the generation of mathematicians and physicists who grew up in the years 1956 to 1981 37 38 His writing inspired directly or indirectly many who would go on to careers in mathematics science and other related endeavors 39 40 41 42 43 44 Gardner s admirers included such diverse individuals as W H Auden Arthur C Clarke Carl Sagan Isaac Asimov Richard Dawkins Stephen Jay Gould and the entire French literary group known as the Oulipo 45 46 47 48 Salvador Dali once sought him out to discuss four dimensional hypercubes 49 David Auerbach wrote A case can be made in purely practical terms for Martin Gardner as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century His popularizations of science and mathematical games in Scientific American over the 25 years he wrote for them might have helped create more young mathematicians and computer scientists than any other single factor prior to the advent of the personal computer 50 Colm Mulcahy described him as without doubt the best friend mathematics ever had 51 Gardner s column has been credited with introducing the public to works and problems that have become mainstays of popular mathematics including the secretary problem Conway s Game of Life the Mandelbrot fractal set Penrose tiles public key cryptosystems and books such as A K Dewdney s Planiverse and Douglas Hofstadter s Godel Escher Bach 52 53 54 Gardner was instrumental in spreading the awareness and understanding of M C Escher s work Gardner wrote to Escher in 1961 to ask permission to use his Horseman tessellation in an upcoming column about H S M Coxeter Escher replied saying that he knew Gardner as author of The Annotated Alice which had been sent to Escher by Coxeter The correspondence led to Gardner introducing the previously unknown Escher s art to the world 51 His writing was credited as both broad and deep 55 56 57 Noam Chomsky once wrote Martin Gardner s contribution to contemporary intellectual culture is unique in its range its insight and understanding of hard questions that matter 46 58 Gardner repeatedly alerted the public and other mathematicians to recent discoveries in mathematics recreational and otherwise In addition to introducing many first rate puzzles and topics such as Penrose tiles 59 and Conway s Game of Life 60 he was equally adept at writing columns about traditional mathematical topics such as knot theory Fibonacci numbers Pascal s triangle the Mobius strip transfinite numbers four dimensional space Zeno s paradoxes Fermat s Last Theorem and the four color problem 50 61 Gardner set a new high standard for writing about mathematics 62 63 64 65 66 In a 2004 interview he said I go up to calculus and beyond that I don t understand any of the papers that are being written I consider that that was an advantage for the type of column I was doing because I had to understand what I was writing about and that enabled me to write in such a way that an average reader could understand what I was saying If you are writing popularly about math I think it s good not to know too much math 1 John Horton Conway called him the most learned man I have ever met 45 Gardner s mathematical grapevine Edit He had carried on incredibly interesting exchanges with hundreds of mathematicians as well as with artists and polymaths such as Maurits Escher and Piet Hein 1 AMS NoticesGardner maintained an extensive network of experts and amateurs with whom he regularly exchanged information and ideas 67 Doris Schattschneider would later term this circle of collaborators Gardner s mathematical grapevine or MG2 68 69 Gardner s role as a hub of this network helped facilitate several introductions that led to further fruitful collaborations 70 Mathematicians Conway Berlekamp and Guy who met as a result of Gardner s influence would go on to write Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays a foundational book in combinatorial game theory that Gardner championed 71 Gardner also introduced Conway to Benoit Mandelbrot because he knew of their mutual interest in Penrose tiles 72 73 Gardner s network was also responsible for introducing Doris Schattschneider and Marjorie Rice who worked together to document the newly discovered pentagon tilings 67 74 Gardner credited his network with generating further material for his columns When I first started the column I was not in touch with any mathematicians and gradually mathematicians who were creative in the field found out about the column and began corresponding with me So my most interesting columns were columns based on the material I got from them so I owe them a big debt of gratitude 68 Gardner prepared each of his columns in a painstaking and scholarly fashion and conducted copious correspondence to be sure that everything was fact checked for mathematical accuracy 75 Communication was often by postcard or telephone and Gardner kept meticulous notes of everything typically on index cards 76 Archives of some of his correspondence stored at Stanford University occupy some 63 linear feet of shelf space 77 This correspondence led to columns about the rep tiles and pentominos of Solomon W Golomb the space filling curves of Bill Gosper 78 the aperiodic tiles of Roger Penrose the Game of Life invented by John H Conway the superellipse and the Soma cube of Piet Hein the trapdoor functions of Diffie Hellman and Merkle the flexagons of Stone Tuckerman Feynman and Tukey the geometrical delights in a book by H S M Coxeter the game of Hex invented by Piet Hein and John Nash Tutte s account of squaring the square and many other topics The wide array of mathematicians physicists computer scientists philosophers magicians artists writers and other influential thinkers who can be counted as part of Gardner s mathematical grapevine includes 68 79 61 80 81 45 82 42 67 Robert Ammann Mitsumasa Anno Elwyn R Berlekamp Dmitri A Borgmann Gregory Chaitin Fan Chung John Horton Conway H S M Coxeter Erik Demaine Persi Diaconis M C Escher Solomon W Golomb Bill Gosper Ronald Graham Richard K Guy Frank Harary Piet Hein Douglas Hofstadter Ray Hyman Scott Kim David A Klarner Donald Knuth Harry Lindgren Benoit Mandelbrot Robert Nozick Penn amp Teller Roger Penrose James Randi Marjorie Rice Ron Rivest Tom Rodgers Rudy Rucker Lee Sallows Doris Schattschneider Jeffrey Shallit David Singmaster Jerry Slocum Raymond Smullyan Ian Stewart W T Tutte Stanislaw Ulam Samuel Yates Nob YoshigaharaMathematical Games column EditFurther information List of Martin Gardner Mathematical Games columns I just play all the time and am fortunate enough to get paid for it Martin Gardner 1998 For over a quarter century Gardner wrote a monthly column on the subject of recreational mathematics for Scientific American It all began with his free standing article on hexaflexagons which ran in the December 1956 issue 72 47 Flexagons became a bit of a fad and soon people all over New York City were making them Gerry Piel the SA publisher at the time asked Gardner Is there enough similar material to this to make a regular feature Gardner said he thought so The January 1957 issue contained his first column entitled Mathematical Games 30 Almost 300 more columns were to follow 1 The Mathematical Games column became the most popular feature of the magazine and was the first thing that many readers turned to 83 In September 1977 Scientific American acknowledged the prestige and popularity of Gardner s column by moving it from the back to the very front of the magazine 84 It ran from 1956 to 1981 with sporadic columns afterwards and was the first introduction of many subjects to a wider audience notably 85 Solomon Golomb s Polyominoes were among the many recreational mathematics topics featured by Gardner in his column The 35 hexominoes are depicted Flexagons Dec 1956 The Game of Hex Jul 1957 The Soma cube Sep 1958 Squaring the square Nov 1958 The Three Prisoners problem Oct 1959 Polyominoes Nov 1960 The Paradox of the unexpected hanging Mar 1963 Rep tiles May 1963 The Superellipse Sep 1965 Pentominoes Oct 1965 The mathematical art of M C Escher Apr 1966 Fractals and the Koch snowflake curve Mar 1967 Conway s Game of Life Oct 1970 Intransitive dice Dec 1970 Newcomb s paradox Jul 1973 Tangrams Aug 1974 Penrose tilings Jan 1977 Public key cryptography Aug 1977 Hofstadter s Godel Escher Bach Jul 1979 The Monster group Jun 1980 Ironically Gardner had problems learning calculus and never took a mathematics course after high school While editing Humpty Dumpty s Magazine he constructed many paper folding puzzles At a magic show in 1956 fellow magician Royal Vale Heath introduced Gardner to the intricately folded paper shapes known as flexagons and steered him to the four Princeton University professors who had invented and investigated their mathematical properties The subsequent article Gardner wrote on hexaflexagons led directly to the column 30 Gardner s son Jim once asked him what was his favorite puzzle and Gardner answered almost immediately The monkey and the coconuts 86 It had been the subject of his April 1958 Games column and in 2001 he chose to make it the first chapter of his best of collection The Colossal Book of Mathematics 87 In the 1980s Mathematical Games began to appear only irregularly Other authors began to share the column and the June 1986 issue saw the final installment under that title In 1981 on Gardner s retirement from Scientific American the column was replaced by Douglas Hofstadter s Metamagical Themas a name that is an anagram of Mathematical Games Virtually all of the games columns were collected in book form starting in 1959 with The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles amp Diversions 88 Over the next four decades fourteen more books followed 23 Donald Knuth called them the canonical books 89 90 Pseudoscience and skepticism EditMartin Gardner is the single brightest beacon defending rationality and good science against the mysticism and anti intellectualism that surround us 32 Stephen Jay Gould Gardner was an uncompromising critic of fringe science His book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science 1952 revised 1957 launched the modern skeptical movement 26 It debunked dubious movements and theories 91 including Fletcherism Lamarckism food faddism Dowsing Rods Charles Fort Rudolf Steiner Dianetics the Bates method for improving eyesight Einstein deniers the Flat Earth theory the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria Immanuel Velikovsky s Worlds in Collision the reincarnation of Bridey Murphy Wilhelm Reich s orgone theory the spontaneous generation of life extra sensory perception and psychokinesis homeopathy phrenology palmistry graphology and numerology This book and his subsequent efforts Science Good Bad and Bogus 1981 Order and Surprise 1983 Gardner s Whys amp Wherefores 1989 etc provoked a lot of criticism from the advocates of alternative science and New Age philosophy 92 he kept up running dialogues both public and private with many of them for decades 26 In a review of Science Good Bad and Bogus Stephen Jay Gould called Gardner The Quack Detector a writer who expunge d nonsense and in so doing had become a priceless national resource 93 In 1976 Gardner joined with fellow skeptics philosopher Paul Kurtz psychologist Ray Hyman sociologist Marcello Truzzi and stage magician James Randi to found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal now called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Intellectuals including astronomer Carl Sagan author and biochemist Isaac Asimov psychologist B F Skinner and journalist Philip J Klass became fellows of the program From 1983 to 2002 he wrote a monthly column called Notes of a Fringe Watcher originally Notes of a Psi Watcher for Skeptical Inquirer that organization s monthly magazine 94 These columns have been collected in five books starting with The New Age Notes of a Fringe Watcher in 1988 95 Gardner was a relentless critic of self proclaimed Israeli psychic Uri Geller and wrote two satirical booklets about him in the 1970s using the pen name Uriah Fuller in which he explained how such purported psychics do their seemingly impossible feats such as mentally bending spoons and reading minds 96 Martin Gardner continued to criticize junk science throughout his life and he was fearless His targets included not just safe subjects like astrology and UFO sightings but topics such as chiropractic vegetarianism Madame Blavatsky creationism Scientology the Laffer curve Christian Science and the Hutchins Adler Great Books Movement 50 The last thing he wrote in the spring of 2010 a month before his death was an article excoriating the dubious medical opinions and bogus science of Oprah Winfrey particularly her support for the thoroughly discredited theory that vaccinations cause autism it went on to bemoan the needless deaths of children that such notions are likely to cause 97 Skeptical Inquirer named him one of the Ten Outstanding Skeptics of the Twentieth Century 98 In 2010 he was posthumously honored with an award for his contributions in the skeptical field from the Independent Investigations Group 99 In 1982 the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry awarded Gardner its In Praise of Reason Award for his heroic efforts in defense of reason and the dignity of the skeptical attitude 100 and in 2011 it added Gardner to its Pantheon of Skeptics 101 Magic EditCard magic and magic in general owe a far greater debt to Martin Gardner than most conjurors realize 102 Stephen Minch Martin Gardner held a lifelong fascination with magic and illusion that began when his father demonstrated a trick to him that seemed to violate physical laws 103 He wrote for a magic magazine in high school and worked in a department store demonstrating magic tricks while he was at the University of Chicago 104 Gardner s first published writing at the age of fifteen was a magic trick in The Sphinx the official magazine of the Society of American Magicians 105 He focused mainly on micromagic table or close up magic and from the 1930s on published a significant number of original contributions to this secretive field Magician Joe M Turner said The Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic which Gardner wrote in 1985 is guaranteed to show up in any poll of magicians favorite magic books 106 107 His first magic book for the general public Mathematics Magic and Mystery Dover 1956 is still considered a classic in the field 105 He was well known for his innovative tapping and spelling effects with and without playing cards and was most proud of the effect he called the Wink Change 108 Many of Gardner s lifelong friends were magicians 109 These included William Simon who introduced Gardner to Charlotte Greenwald whom he married in 1952 Dai Vernon Jerry Andrus statistician Persi Diaconis and polymath Raymond Smullyan Gardner considered fellow magician James Randi his closest friend Diaconis and Smullyan like Gardner straddled the two worlds of mathematics and magic 61 Mathematics and magic were frequently intertwined in Gardner s work 110 One of his earliest books Mathematics Magic and Mystery 1956 was about mathematically based magic tricks 104 Mathematical magic tricks were often featured in his Mathematical Games column for example his August 1962 column was titled A variety of diverting tricks collected at a fictitious convention of magicians From 1998 to 2002 he wrote a monthly column on magic tricks called Trick of the Month in The Physics Teacher a journal published by the American Association of Physics Teachers 111 In 1999 Magic magazine named Gardner one of the 100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century 8 In 2005 he received a Lifetime Achievement Fellowship from the Academy of Magical Arts 112 The last work to be published during his lifetime was a magic trick in the May 2010 issue of Word Ways The Journal of Recreational Linguistics 105 Theism and religion EditI am a philosophical theist I believe in a personal God and I believe in an afterlife and I believe in prayer but I don t believe in any established religion This is called philosophical theism Philosophical theism is entirely emotional As Kant said he destroyed pure reason to make room for faith 113 Martin Gardner 2008 Gardner was raised as a Methodist his mother was very religious but rejected established religion as an adult 22 He considered himself a philosophical theist and a fideist 113 He believed in a personal God in an afterlife and prayer but rejected established religion Nevertheless he had abiding fascination with religious belief In his autobiography he stated When many of my fans discovered that I believed in God and even hoped for an afterlife they were shocked and dismayed I do not mean the God of the Bible especially the God of the Old Testament or any other book that claims to be divinely inspired For me God is a Wholly Other transcendent intelligence impossible for us to understand He or she is somehow responsible for our universe and capable of providing how I have no inkling an afterlife 114 Gardner described his own belief as philosophical theism inspired by the works of philosopher Miguel de Unamuno While eschewing systematic religious doctrine he retained a belief in God asserting that this belief cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by reason or science 115 At the same time he was skeptical of claims that any god has communicated with human beings through spoken or telepathic revelation or through miracles in the natural world 116 Gardner has been quoted as saying that he regarded parapsychology and other research into the paranormal as tantamount to tempting God and seeking signs and wonders He stated that while he would expect tests on the efficacy of prayers to be negative he would not rule out a priori the possibility that as yet unknown paranormal forces may allow prayers to influence the physical world 117 Gardner wrote repeatedly about what public figures such as Robert Maynard Hutchins Mortimer Adler and William F Buckley Jr believed and whether their beliefs were logically consistent In some cases he attacked prominent religious figures such as Mary Baker Eddy on the grounds that their claims are unsupportable His semi autobiographical novel The Flight of Peter Fromm depicts a traditionally Protestant Christian man struggling with his faith examining 20th century scholarship and intellectual movements and ultimately rejecting Christianity while remaining a theist 115 Gardner said that he suspected that the fundamental nature of human consciousness may not be knowable or discoverable unless perhaps a physics more profound than underlying quantum mechanics is some day developed In this regard he said he was an adherent of the New Mysterianism 118 His philosophical views in general are described and defended in his book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener 1983 revised 1999 119 Annotated works EditGardner was considered a leading authority on Lewis Carroll His annotated version of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass explaining the many mathematical riddles wordplay and literary references found in the Alice books was first published as The Annotated Alice Clarkson Potter 1960 Sequels were published with new annotations as More Annotated Alice Random House 1990 and finally as The Annotated Alice The Definitive Edition Norton 1999 combining notes from the earlier editions and new material 120 The original book arose when Gardner found the Alice books sort of frightening when he was young but found them fascinating as an adult 121 He felt that someone ought to annotate them and suggested to a publisher that Bertrand Russell be asked when the publisher was unable to get past Russell s secretary Gardner was asked to take on the project himself 122 There had long been annotated books written by scholars for other scholars but Gardner was the first to write such a work for the general public 123 and soon many other writers followed his lead 124 125 Gardner himself went on to produce annotated editions of G K Chesterton s The Innocence Of Father Brown and The Man Who Was Thursday as well as of celebrated poems including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Casey at the Bat The Night Before Christmas and The Hunting of the Snark 109 Novels and short stories EditGardner wrote two novels He was a perennial fan of the Oz books written by L Frank Baum 126 and in 1988 he published Visitors from Oz based on the characters in Baum s various Oz books Gardner was a founding member of the International Wizard of Oz Club and winner of its 1971 L Frank Baum Memorial Award His other novel was The Flight of Peter Fromm 1973 which reflected his lifelong fascination with religious belief and the problem of faith 127 His short stories were collected in The No Sided Professor and Other Tales of Fantasy Humor Mystery and Philosophy 1987 1 Autobiography EditAt the age of 95 Gardner wrote Undiluted Hocus Pocus The Autobiography of Martin Gardner He was living in a one room apartment in Norman Oklahoma and as was his custom wrote it on a typewriter and edited it using scissors and rubber cement 81 He took the title from a poem a so called grook by his good friend Piet Hein 128 which perfectly expresses Gardner s abiding sense of mystery and wonder about existence 129 We glibly talk of nature s laws but do things have a natural cause Black earth turned into yellow crocus is undiluted hocus pocus Word play EditGardner s interest in wordplay led him to conceive of a magazine on recreational linguistics In 1967 he pitched the idea to Greenwood Periodicals and nominated Dmitri Borgmann as editor 130 The resulting journal Word Ways carried many of his articles as of 2013 update it was still publishing his submissions posthumously He also wrote a Puzzle Tale column for Asimov s Science Fiction magazine from 1977 to 1986 Gardner was a member of the all male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov s fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers 131 Pen names EditGardner often used pen names In 1952 while working for the children s magazine Humpty Dumpty he contributed stories written by Humpty Dumpty Jnr For several years starting in 1953 he was a managing editor of Polly Pigtails a magazine for young girls and also wrote under that name His Annotated Casey at the Bat 1967 included a parody of the poem attributed to Nitram Rendrag his name spelled backwards Using the pen name Uriah Fuller he wrote two books attacking the alleged psychic Uri Geller In later years Gardner often wrote parodies of his favorite poems under the name Armand T Ringer an anagram of his name 132 In 1983 one George Groth panned Gardner s book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener in the New York Review of Books Only in the last line of the review was it revealed that George Groth was Martin Gardner himself 119 In his January 1960 Mathematical Games column Gardner introduced the fictitious Dr Matrix and wrote about him often over the next two decades Dr Matrix was not exactly a pen name although Gardner did pretend that everything in these columns came from the fertile mind of the good doctor Then in 1979 Dr Matrix himself published an article in the quite respectable Two Year College Mathematics Journal 133 It was called Martin Gardner Defending the Honor of the Human Mind and contained a biography of Gardner and a history of his Mathematical Games column It would be a further decade before Martin published an article in such a mathematics journal under his own name 132 Philosophy of mathematics EditGardner was known for his sometimes controversial philosophy of mathematics 134 He wrote negative reviews of The Mathematical Experience by Philip J Davis and Reuben Hersh and What Is Mathematics Really by Hersh both of which were critical of aspects of mathematical Platonism and the first of which was well received by the mathematical community While Gardner was often perceived as a hard core Platonist his reviews demonstrated some formalist tendencies citation needed Gardner maintained that his views are widespread among mathematicians but Hersh has countered that in his experience as a professional mathematician and speaker this is not the case 135 Mathematics education EditIn the August 1998 edition of Scientific American Gardner wrote his final piece for Scientific American titled A Quarter Century of Recreational Mathematics 136 In it he said For 40 years I have done my best to convince educators that recreational math should be incorporated into the standard curriculum It should be regularly introduced as a way to interest young students in the wonders of mathematics So far though movement in this direction has been glacial He recalls how as a young boy a math teacher had scolded him for working on a bit of recreation mathematics and laments at how wrongheaded this attitude is He notes that the magazine Mathematics Teacher published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and specially dedicated to improving mathematics instruction for grades 8 14 137 often has articles on recreational topics but that most teachers do not use them 80 Legacy and awards EditThe numerous awards Gardner received include 138 1987 Leroy P Steele Prize for his many books and articles on mathematics 1971 L Frank Baum Memorial Award from the International Wizard of Oz Club 1980 The main belt asteroid 2587 Gardner discovered by Edward L G Bowell at Anderson Mesa Station is named after Martin Gardner 139 1990 Allendoerfer Award along with Fan Chung amp Ronald Graham from The Mathematical Association of America MAA 1994 JPBM Communications Award from the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics 1997 became a Fellow Class Humanities and Arts Section Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1998 Trevor Evans Award from the MAA 140 1999 listed in the 100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century by Magic magazine 141 2011 Houdini Hall of Honor award posthumous from the Independent Investigations GroupThe Mathematical Association of America has established a Martin Gardner Lecture to be given each year on the last day of MAA MathFest the summer meeting of the MAA The first annual lecture Recreational Mathematics and Computer Science Martin Gardner s Influence on Research was given by Erik Demaine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Saturday August 3 2019 at MathFest in Cincinnati 142 The 2021 lecture Surprising discoveries of three amateur mathematicians M C Escher Marjorie Rice and Rinus Roelofs was virtual and was given by Doris Schattschneider 143 There are eight bricks honoring Gardner in the Paul R Halmos Commemorative Walk installed by The Mathematical Association of America MAA at their Conference Center in Washington D C 144 Gardner has an Erdos number of 1 145 Gathering 4 Gardner EditMain article Gathering 4 Gardner Martin Gardner continued to write up until his death in 2010 and his community of fans grew to span several generations 32 Moreover his influence was so broad that many of his fans had little or no contact with each other 146 This led Atlanta entrepreneur and puzzle collector Tom Rodgers to the idea of hosting a weekend gathering celebrating Gardner s contributions to recreational mathematics rationality magic puzzles literature and philosophy 45 Although Gardner was famously shy and would usually decline an honor if it required him to make a personal appearance Rogers persuaded him to attend the first such Gathering 4 Gardner G4G held in Atlanta in January 1993 147 A second such get together was held in 1996 again with Gardner in attendance A video was made for the CBC Television program The Nature of Things with David Suzuki 148 It featured Gardner along with many members of his circle and was called Martin Gardner Mathemagician and broadcast on March 14 1996 At this point Rogers and his friends decided to make the gathering a regular bi annual event Participants over the years have ranged from long time Gardner friends such as John Horton Conway Elwyn Berlekamp Ronald Graham Donald Coxeter and Richard K Guy to newcomers like mathematician and mathematical artist Erik Demaine mathematical video maker Vi Hart and Fields Medalist Manjul Bhargava 32 149 The program at the G4G meetings presents topics which Gardner had written about The first gathering in 1993 was G4G1 and the 1996 event was G4G2 Since then it has been in even numbered years so far always in Atlanta 150 The 2018 event was G4G13 151 Bibliography EditMain article Martin Gardner bibliography In a publishing career spanning 80 years 1930 2010 152 Gardner authored or edited over 100 books and countless articles columns and reviews All Gardner s works were non fiction except for two novels The Flight of Peter Fromm 1973 and Visitors from Oz 1998 and two collections of short pieces The Magic Numbers of Dr Matrix 1967 1985 and The No Sided Professor 1987 See also EditBoy or Girl paradox Divisibility rule Hexapawn Homicidal chauffeur problem Polyabolo Strong law of small numbers Unexpected hanging paradoxReferences Edit a b c d e f g AMS Notices 2004 MAA Writing Awards Presented PDF Notices of the AMS 47 10 1282 November 2000 Archived PDF from the original on 2014 07 12 Gardner Martin January 1999 The Asymmetric Propeller PDF The College Mathematics Journal 30 1 18 22 doi 10 2307 2687198 JSTOR 2687198 Archived PDF from the original on 2014 03 04 a b Martin 2010 Singmaster D 2010 Obituary Martin Gardner 1914 2010 Nature 465 7300 884 Kindley 2015 When it comes to explanations of Carroll s books no one has yet improved on the work of Gardner Buffalo Public Library The annotated Alice Alice s adventures in wonderland amp through the looking glass Archived 2016 06 24 at the Wayback Machine Martin Gardner s groundbreaking work went on to sell over a million copies establishing the modest math genius as one of our foremost Carroll scholars a b Top 10 Martin Gardner Books Archived 2016 03 25 at the Wayback Machine by Colm Mulcahy Huffington Post Books October 28 2014 Costello 1988 p 114 England 2014 Even apart from mathematics and puzzles Gardner s output was staggering Martin Gardner dies at 95 prolific mathematics columnist for Scientific American by Thomas H Maugh Los Angeles Times May 26 2010 AMS Notices 2011 Martin Gardner was a gem There is absolutely no question that he more than anyone else in the world was responsible for turning people of all ages on to the pleasures of mathematical recreations Ronald L Graham Case 2014 Gardner is credited with the rebirth of recreational mathematics in the U S Martin 2010 His mathematical writings intrigued a generation of mathematicians Bellos 2010 He became a kind of father figure to a generation of young mathematicians who corresponded with him Such was Gardner s influence between the late 1950s and 1980s that it would be hard to find a professional mathematician from those years who does not cite him as an inspiration Martin Gardner Mathematician Martin Gardner Home Site Gathering 4 Gardner 2014 Archived from the original on November 18 2016 Retrieved October 28 2016 originally published in 1952 as In the Name of Science An Entertaining Survey of the High Priests and Cultists of Science Past and Present Shermer Michael 2001 The Borderlands of Science Where Sense Meets Nonsense Oxford University Press p 50 Retrieved May 20 2016 Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science is still in print and arguably the skeptic classic of the past half century About CSI Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Archived from the original on 2016 11 12 Retrieved 2016 10 28 Reviews by and about Martin Gardner The New York Review of Books 1973 to 1998 James Gardner later became the 8th President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists a b Martin Gardner Famous Scientists a b England 2014 Suzuki 1996 at 17 20 MacTutor a b c Shermer 1997 Gardner Martin The Hermit Scientist Antioch Review Winter 1950 1951 pp 447 457 Yam Philip December 1995 Profile Martin Gardner the Mathematical Gamester 1914 2010 Archived 2018 05 11 at the Wayback Machine Scientific American Gardner Martin Berlekamp Elwyn R Rodgers Tom 1999 The mathemagician and pied puzzler a collection in tribute to Martin Gardner A K Peters Ltd ISBN 978 1 56881 075 1 a b c d Gardner Martin 2013 Burstein 2011 a b c d Richards 2014 Albers 2008 Princeton University Press Reviews of Undiluted Hocus Pocus Princeton University Press Reviews of Undiluted Hocus Pocus Martin Gardner occupies a special place in twentieth century mathematics More than any other single individual he inspired a generation of young people to study math Barry Arthur Cipra Bellos 2010 He was not a mathematician he never even took a maths class after high school yet Martin Gardner who has died aged 95 was arguably the most influential and inspirational figure in mathematics in the second half of the last century Mulcahy 2014 It s been said that he had a million readers there at his peak Malkevitch 2014 Martin Gardner s columns and books have been referenced by huge numbers of research papers that involve mathematics Hofstadter 2010 Many of today s most influential mathematicians and physicists magicians and philosophers writers and computer scientists owe their direction to Martin Gardner They may not even be aware of how big a role he played in their development Bhargava 2018 Eventually when I was around 12 years old through my puzzle explorations I of course also had the good fortune of discovering the works of Martin Gardner They inspired me a huge amount and gave me something far more enjoyable to do than go to math class I also read other recreational mathematics and puzzle books such as those of Raymond Smullyan and all of these works definitely had a great influence on me as a playing and playful mathematician Antonick 2014 Martin Gardner was well known for inspiring generations of students to become professional mathematicians a b Antonick 2014 Martin Gardner s column in Scientific American was one of the two things that above all others convinced me I wanted to be a mathematician Ian Stewart Demaine 2008 p ix Many of today s mathematicians entered this field through Gardner s influence Crease 2018 As a columnist for Scientific American Gardner inspired generations of physicists mathematicians philosophers puzzle makers logicians magicians and others including me a b c d Mulcahy 2013 a b Brown 2010 a b The Economist 2010 Dirda 2009 Mulcahy 2017 The surrealist artist was intrigued by Martin s writings on the 4 dimensional cube or tesseract which had been a prominent feature of his own 1954 painting Crucifixion Corpus Hypercubus a b c Auerbach 2013 a b Mulcahy 2017 AMS Notices 2011 Already when he began his monthly series in 1956 and 1957 he was corresponding with the likes of Claude Shannon John Nash John Milnor and David Gale Later he would receive mail from budding mathematicians John Conway Persi Diaconis Jeffrey Shallit Ron Rivest et al Donald Knuth Malkevitch 2014 The range of wonderful problems examples and theorems that Gardner treated over the years is enormous They include ideas from geometry algebra number theory graph theory topology and knot theory to name but a few Bellos Alex 2010 I discovered how good the columns really were covering everything from public key cryptography to superstring theory He was the first to cover so many breakthroughs BBC News 2014 It went a lot further than puzzles there was substance depth and a fair share of mystery and wonder in the topics he wrote about BBC News 2014 Penrose tiles are a good example of just how nontrivial the consequences of his puzzle column could be The materials scientist Dan Shechtman actually won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2011 for the discovery of quasicrystals three dimensional Penrose tiles in some aluminium manganese alloys Hofstadter 2010 His approach and his ways of combining ideas are truly unique and truly creative and if I dare say so what Martin Gardner has done is of far greater originality than work that has won many people Nobel Prizes MacTutor Gardner has produced a number of mathematical papers written with leading mathematicians Kullman 1997 Martin Gardner in his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American presented for the first time a description of the Penrose tiles including many of Conway s results concerning them MAA FOCUS 2010 Another milestone was in late 1970 when Martin s column introduced the world to John Horton Conway s Game of Life John Derbyshire a b c Hofstadter 2010 AMS Notices 2004 His crystalline prose always enlightening never pedantic set a new standard for high quality mathematical popularization Allyn Jackson Lister 1995 Martin Gardner s supreme achievement was his ability to communicate difficult and often profound subjects with a few deft but human strokes of his pen Mirsky 2010 His writing has been valued by generations of professional mathematicians Ian Stewart Teller 2014 Gardner writes with authority and ease You trust him to take you wherever he feels like going Hofstadter 2010 Martin had a magical touch in writing about math a b c Peterson 2014 a b c Case 2014 David A Klarner editor 1981 In Praise of Amateurs in The Mathematical Gardner Weber amp Schmidt 1981 Propp 2015 Before there were search engines the intellectual world relied on human hubs to serve as repositories of knowledge and connectors of people with common interests who otherwise would not have known one another Martin Gardner was such a connector His column was the best mathematical watering hole of its day and behind the scenes he served as a tireless mathematical match maker Gardner was a hub par excellence Berlekamp 2014 Partly because of what I had read about them in Martin Gardner s columns I was appropriately awestruck in the 1960s when I first met Sol Golomb and then Richard Guy each of whom had a large influence on my subsequent work In 1969 Richard introduced me to John Horton Conway and the three of us immediately began collaborating on a book that eventually became Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays In the 1970s I joined Conway in some of his many visits to Gardner s home on Euclid Avenue in Hastings on Hudson New York Gardner soon became an enthusiastic advocate of our book project and he previewed various snippets of it in his Scientific American columns a b Mulcahy 2014 Gardner 2013 page 144 Conway had been making new discoveries about Penrose tiling and Mandelbrot was interested because Penrose tiling patterns are fractals Cole K C March 11 1998 Beating the Pros to the Punch Los Angeles Times AMS Notices 2011 BBC News 2014 His secret was a fantastic card index system of his own going back to the 1930s stored in shoe boxes Stanford University Archives Gardner Martin Papers Online Archive of California Discrete Geometry Combinatorics and Graph Theory Revised selected papers Jin Akiyama William Y C Chen Mikio Kano BBC News 2014 a b Gardner 1998 a b Teller 2014 The Math Factor Podcast Website John H Conway reminisces on his long friendship and collaboration with Martin Gardner Hofstadter 2010 There were thousands of such people spread all around the world mathematicians physicists philosophers computer scientists and on and on who thought of Martin Gardner s column not as merely a feature of that great magazine Scientific American but as its very heart and soul Demaine 2008 p 24 Adamatzky A Ed 2010 Game of Life Cellular Automata ebook ISBN 1849962170 pp 15 16 Conway came to New York to meet with Gardner and could not believe the amount of interest Gardner s columns on the game of Life had generated Antonick Gary 2013 Martin Gardner s The Monkey and the Coconuts in Numberplay The New York Times October 7 2013 Gardner Martin The Colossal Book of Mathematics Classic Puzzles Paradoxes and Problems 2001 W W Norton amp Company ISBN 0 393 02023 1 Martin Gardner Mathematical Games Collections Archived 2016 06 29 at the Wayback Machine by David Langford The New Martin Gardner Mathematical Library Archived 2016 12 26 at the Wayback Machine Cambridge University Press The Canon The fifteen Mathematical Games books at martin gardner org Archived 2015 02 16 at the Wayback Machine There s One Born Every Minute review by Ed Regis The New York Times June 4 2000 Martin Gardner s 1957 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science is the classic put down of pseudoscience Nobody who read it will soon forget its stellar roll call of mid 20th century cranks and crackpots Friedel 2018 This book and his subsequent efforts earned him a wealth of detractors and antagonists in the fields of fringe science and New Age philosophy Gould 1982 In this climate beleaguered rationalism needs its skilled debaters writers who can combine wit penetrating analysis sharp prose and sweet reason into an expansive view that expunges nonsense without stifling innovation and that presents the excitement and humanity of science in a positive way For more than thirty years Martin Gardner has played this largely thankless role with tireless efficiency He is more than a mere individual fighting a set of personal battles he has become a priceless national resource Articles by Martin Gardner 115 Results Skeptical Inquirer Prometheus Books The New Age Notes of a Fringe Watcher by Martin Gardner Linkapedia Visualarts Discover more about Uriah Fuller linkapedia visualarts com Oprah Winfrey Bright but Gullible Billionaire Archived 2016 05 01 at the Wayback Machine Skeptical Inquirer March April 2010 Skeptical Inquirer Magazine Names the Ten Outstanding Skeptics of the Century About the IIG Awards Independent Investigations Group CSICOP Council in Atlanta Police Psychics Local Groups The Skeptical Inquirer 7 3 13 1983 The Pantheon of Skeptics Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Martin Gardner s Magic Influence Archived 2016 05 21 at the Wayback Machine at martin gardner org Costello 1988 p 115 His father had taught him his first trick the Knife and Paper trick a bit of legerdemain involving a butter knife with bits of paper on it a b Bellos 2010 a b c Gathering 4 Gardner 2014 Demaine 2008 p 12 Reviews of Martin Gardner s Impromptu Archived 2017 03 21 at the Wayback Machine The Miracle Factory Demaine 2008 pp 4 5 a b Lister 1995 from Dover Publications Mathematics Magic and Mystery Archived 2016 05 06 at the Wayback Machine As a rule we simply accept these tricks and magic without recognizing that they are really demonstrations of strict laws based on probability sets number theory topology and other branches of mathematics The Dover Math and Science Newsletter Archived 2015 05 03 at the Wayback Machine May 16 2011 Hall of Fame The Academy of Magical Arts Archived from the original on 2016 11 20 Retrieved 2017 12 24 a b Carpenter Alexander 17 October 2008 Interview Martin Gardner on Philosophical Theism Adventists and Price Spectrum Archived from the original on July 13 2016 Retrieved December 21 2019 Gardner 2013 p 191 a b Groth 1983 Martin Gardner 1914 2010 Chris French mourns the passing of Martin Gardner The Guardian May 25 2010 The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener by Martin Gardner Quill 1983 pp 238 239 A Mind at Play An Interview with Martin Gardner by Kendrick Frazier Skeptical Inquirer Volume 22 2 March April 1998 a b Gardner s Whys in The Night is Large chapter 40 pp 481 87 Dirda 2009 With this book Gardner virtually launched the entire mini genre of annotated classics Jan Susina Conversation with Martin Gardner Annotator of Wonderland The Five Owls Jan Feb 2000 62 64 Alice Still Lives Here by Michael Sims Nashville Scene July 06 2000 Richards 2018 Kindley 2015 Just as importantly though The Annotated Alice gave rise to a new popular genre Richards 2018 The look and feel was entirely due to Martin Gardner MacTutor My mother read The Wizard of Oz to me when I was a little boy and I looked over her shoulder as she read it I learned how to read that way Brown 2010 Faith was also the subject of his 1973 semi autobiographical novel The Flight of Peter Fromm in which the title character and his atheist professor of divinity grapple for decades with questions about God Grooks by Piet Hein Archived 2014 10 10 at the Wayback Machine Undiluted Hocus Pocus Princeton University Press 2013 ISBN 978 0691159911 Reviewed by Andy Magid Eckler A Ross 2010 Look Back Word Ways Vol 43 Issue 3 Article 6 Don Albers interview of Gardner Part 4 The Trap Door Spiders Archived 2008 11 19 at the Wayback Machine a b Top 10 Martin Gardner Alter Egos Archived 2017 03 17 at the Wayback Machine at martin gardner org Matrix Irving Joshua 1979 Martin Gardner Defending the Honor of the Human Mind The Two Year College Mathematics Journal Vol 10 No 4 Sep 1979 pp 227 232 Skeptic Martin Gardner Dies Archived 2015 10 02 at the Wayback Machine by Loren Coleman CryptoZoo News May 23 2010 Hersh Reuben 31 October 1997 Re Martin Gardner book review Foundations of Mathematics mailing list Retrieved 22 May 2010 A Quarter Century of Recreational Mathematics by Martin Gardner Scientific American blog on May 29 2010 Mathematics Teacher website National Council of Mathematics Teachers Martin Gardner s Awards Archived 2016 03 18 at the Wayback Machine JPL Small Body Database Browser Archived 2018 07 06 at the Wayback Machine 2587 Gardner 1980 OH The Mathematical Association of America s Trevor Evans Awards Archived 2017 05 16 at the Wayback Machine Magic magazine Jun 1999 page 60 MAA MathFest 2019 Invited Addresses Doris Schattschneider MAA 2021 Martin Gardner Lecturer Brick Installation Honors Martin Gardner Archived 2017 06 28 at the Wayback Machine MAA New release John Conway Reminiscences about Dr Matrix and Bourbaki by Dana Richards amp Collm Mulcahy Scientific American October 1 2014 MAA FOCUS 2010 His heritage goes beyond essays and books he left a community of magicians mathematicians and wits carrying things forward and delighting in it all Peter Renz Robert P Crease Gathering for Gardner Archived 2018 03 28 at the Wayback Machine The Wall Street Journal p W11 2 April 2010 Suzuki 1996 Gathering 4 Gardner s G4G13 Presents Poetry Drumming and Mathematics with Professor Manjul Bhargava The Atlanta Journal Constitution April 15 2018 Crease 2018 G4G13 Information Archived 2018 05 20 at the Wayback Machine gathering4gardner org Gardner s first publication at age 16 was a magic trick in the periodical The Sphinx Sources EditAlbers Don 2008 The Martin Gardner Interview in five parts with MAA Editorial Director Don Albers fifteeneightyfour the blog of Cambridge University Press AMS Notices 2004 Interview with Martin Gardner Notices of the AMS Vol 52 No 6 June July 2005 pp 602 611 AMS Notices 2011 Memories of Martin Gardner Notices of the AMS Vol 58 No 3 March 2011 p 420 Antonick Gary 2014 Ignited by Martin Gardner Ian Stewart Continues to Illuminate The New York Times October 27 2014 Auerbach David 2013 A Delville of a Tolkar Martin Gardner s Undiluted Hocus Pocus Los Angeles Review of Books November 4 2013 BBC News 2014 Martin Gardner puzzle master extraordinaire BBC News Magazine October 21 2014 Bhargava Manjul 2018 An Interview with Manjul Bhargava with Colm Mulcahy G4G13 April 2018 Bellos Alex 2010 Martin Gardner obituary The Guardian May 27 2010 Berlekamp Elwyn R 2014 The Mathematical Legacy of Martin Gardner Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics SIAM September 2 2014 Berlekamp Elwyn R John H Conway and Richard K Guy 1982 Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays Academic Press ISBN 0120911507 Brown Emma 2010 Martin Gardner prolific math and science writer dies at 95 The Washington Post May 24 2010 Burstein Mark ed 2011 A Bouquet for the Gardner Martin Gardner Remembered New York The Lewis Carroll Society of North America ISBN 978 0 930326 17 3 Case James 2014 Martin Gardner s Mathematical Grapevine By James Case SIAM News April 1 2014 Costello Matthew J 1988 The Greatest Puzzles of All Time New York Prentice Hall Press ISBN 0133649369 Crease Robert P 2018 Martin Gardner would have smiled Physics World Education and Outreach Blog 16 April 2018 Demaine 2008 Edited by Erik D Demaine Martin L Demaine Tom Rodgers A lifetime of puzzles a collection of puzzles in honor of Martin Gardner s 90th birthday A K Peters Wellesley MA ISBN 1568812450 Dirda Michael 2009 Book review by Michael Dirda When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish by Martin Gardner The Washington Post October 22 2009 The Economist 2010 Martin Gardner obituary Jun 3rd 2010 England Jason 2014 The puzzling life of Martin Gardner Cosmos Magazine February 24 2014 Friedel Frederic 2018 Remembering Martin Gardner Jan 16 2018 Gardner Martin 1998 A Quarter Century of Recreational Mathematics by Martin Gardner Scientific American August 1998 Gardner Martin 2013 Undiluted Hocus Pocus The Autobiography of Martin Gardner Princeton University Press ISBN 0691159912 Gardner Martin 2016 The Recreational Mathematics of Piet Hein Piet Hein Website Gathering 4 Gardner 2014 Martin Gardner Magician Gould Stephen Jay 1982 The Quack Detector The New York Review of Books February 4 1982 Groth George 1983 Review of Gardner s Game with God The New York Review of Books December 8 1983 Hofstadter Douglas 2010 Martin Gardner A Major Shaping Force in My Life Scientific American May 24 2010 Klarner David A 1998 Mathematical Recreations A Collection in Honor of Martin Gardner Dover Publications New York pp 140 166 Kindley Evan 2015 Down the Rabbit Hole The rise and rise of literary annotation By Evan Kindley The New Republic September 21 2015 Kullman David 1997 The Penrose Tiling at Miami University Presented at the Mathematical Association of America Ohio Section Meeting Shawnee State University October 24 1997 Lister David 1995 Martin Gardner and Paperfolding British Origami Society February 15 1995 MAA FOCUS 2010 Remembering Martin Gardner vol 30 4 August September 2010 MacTutor 2010 History of Mathematics archive Martin Gardner Malkevitch Joseph 2014 Magical Mathematics A Tribute to Martin Gardner American Mathematical Society March 2014 Martin Douglas 2010 Martin Gardner Puzzler and Polymath Dies at 95 The New York Times May 23 2010 Martin Gardner Mathematician official website Mirsky Steve 2010 Scholars and Others Pay Tribute to Mathematical Games Columnist Martin Gardner Scientific American May 24 2010 Mulcahy Colm 2013 Celebrations of Mind Honor Math s Best Friend Martin Gardner Scientific American October 29 2013 Mulcahy Colm 2014 The Top 10 Martin Gardner Scientific American Articles Scientific American October 21 2014 Mulcahy Colm 2017 Martin Gardner The Best Friend Mathematics Ever Had The Huffington Post January 23 2014 Peterson Ivars 2014 Honoring a Century of Martin Gardner in MAA Focus the newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America Vol 34 No 5 Oct Nov 2014 Propp James 2015 Martin Gardner Testimonials Belmont MA July 29 2015 Princeton University Press Reviews of Undiluted Hocus Pocus The Autobiography of Martin Gardner Richards Dana 2014 Math Games of Martin Gardner Still Spur Innovation by Dana S Richards amp Colm Mulcahy Scientific American October 1 2014 Richards Dana 2018 Martin Gardner Annotator G4G13 April 2018 video Shermer Michael 1997 Martin Gardner 1914 2010 Founder of the Modern Skeptical Movement Michael Shermer interviews Martin Gardner Skeptic Magazine Vol 5 No 2 1997 Suzuki David 1996 Mystery and Magic of Mathematics Martin Gardner and Friends The Nature of Things March 14 1996 video Teller 2014 Undiluted Hocus Pocus by Martin Gardner The New York Times Sunday Book Review January 3 2014External links EditMartin Gardner at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Data from Wikidata Official website with Martin Gardner s Awards and Martin Gardner Appreciations Works by and about Martin Gardner at The Center for Inquiry Libraries Martin Gardner at Library of Congress Authorities with 170 catalog records Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Martin Gardner amp oldid 1116394052, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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