Martin Gardner 1914-2010, R.I.P.

[BaalChatzaf]

Martin Gardner is gone from our midst at the age of 95. He is well known for his column on mathematical games and puzzles in Scientific American for many decades. He debunked pseudo science nonsense (-Fad's and Fallacies in the Name of Science-). He wrote books on mathematical puzzles, mathematical problems and popularized many scientific issues and questions. He worked with Asimov to expose scientific frauds. He was probably the best popularizers of science and mathematics of the twentieth century. His productive life was very long and he published well into what is usually regarded as "old age". His body may have been old but his mind remained young for a long, long time.

We shall not see his like like for a long, long time. R.I.P. Martin Gardner. I, for one, will miss his wit and wisdom and the just plain fun his many works provided.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

Check out the list of Martin Gardner's books on Amazon. I only read about ten of then, but he has published dozens and dozens of books. There is a biography for him in Wikipedia which contains a bibliography of his books (exclusive of the columns he published in Scientific American). He published from 1952 through 2009, nearly sixty prolific years.

What a man!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Alfonso Jones]

Martin Gardner is gone from our midst at the age of 95. He is well known for his column on mathematical games and puzzles in Scientific American for many decades. He debunked pseudo science nonsense (-Fad's and Fallacies in the Name of Science-). He wrote books on mathematical puzzles, mathematical problems and popularized many scientific issues and questions. He worked with Asimov to expose scientific frauds. He was probably the best popularizers of science and mathematics of the twentieth century. His productive life was very long and he published well into what is usually regarded as "old age". His body may have been old but his mind remained young for a long, long time.

We shall not see his like like for a long, long time. R.I.P. Martin Gardner. I, for one, will miss his wit and wisdom and the just plain fun his many works provided.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Martin Gardner was always an interesting read, whether in Scientific American or elsewhere.

Bill P

[Dragonfly]

The first time I heard of Martin Gardner was when I was a student. Browsing the magazines in the university library I discovered the Scientific American and the Mathematical Games by Gardner, which became an addiction. Here I was introduced to Conway's game of life (for which I immediately wrote a program for the mainframe of the university, on paper tape and output on paper...), the programmed worms which traced fantastic figures (my first program for a plotter), the Mandelbrot set and fractals (emptying the ink tanks of a color plotter with thousands of colored dots...), the marvels of public key cryptography and much more. And of course the delightful and slightly crooked Dr. I.J. Matrix, who was a clever numerologist, with his attractive daughter Iva.

Later I read several of his books, one of the best I found Science, Good, Bad and Bogus, in which made short shrift of all kinds of pseudo-scientists. It was by one of Gardner's articles that I learned that so-called rigorous proofs of paranormal phenomena were anything but. Thanks to Gardner I became interested in the Skeptic movement, books by Randi, Kurtz, Hansel (BTW, one of his books got a positive review in The Objectivist), Stenger and Edis (with whom I discussed the drafts of some of their books), and later I've myself done (on a small scale) some debunking of paranormal claims.

I should also mention his Annotated Alice, which gives a lot of interesting information about Carroll's masterwork.

Now when I write this, I realize now that Gardner has been an important influence in my life, even if I didn't always agree with his views (even if he introduced many new and daring notions in his articles, he could sometimes also have rather conservative scientific views). But he was a great debunker, together with James Randi (now in his eighties) and a wonderful writer about all kinds of puzzles, mathematical games and magic tricks.

[anonrobt]

Martin Gardner is gone from our midst at the age of 95. He is well known for his column on mathematical games and puzzles in Scientific American for many decades. He debunked pseudo science nonsense (-Fad's and Fallacies in the Name of Science-). He wrote books on mathematical puzzles, mathematical problems and popularized many scientific issues and questions. He worked with Asimov to expose scientific frauds. He was probably the best popularizers of science and mathematics of the twentieth century. His productive life was very long and he published well into what is usually regarded as "old age". His body may have been old but his mind remained young for a long, long time.

We shall not see his like like for a long, long time. R.I.P. Martin Gardner. I, for one, will miss his wit and wisdom and the just plain fun his many works provided.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Martin Gardner was always an interesting read, whether in Scientific American or elsewhere.

Bill P

Verily!