Saturday, May 22, 2010
Martin Gardner, R. I. P.
Martin Gardner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914 - May 22, 2010)[1] was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, pseudoscience, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and published over 70 books.[2]"
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6 comments:
Gardner was incredible. His annotated versions of the Lewis Carroll classics, which he continued to work on for decades, are absolute models for that sort of effort. His mathematical games books are endlessly stimulating. I devoured everything I could find by Gardner from childhood on; his name on the spine was a guarantee of quality.
When he was a little kid, my Aunt Hazel would stop by to visit his parents and she would scowl deeply whenever little Martin did anything wrong. My Aunt Hazel was good at that sort of thing. True story.
I have a couple Martin Gardner books on magic.
MG is one of my great heroes. Though I had no taste for recreational mathematics (years of advanced calculus courses and the like burned that right out), his brilliant writings on pseudoscience, paranormal hooey & medical quackery were profoundly influential. In The Name of Science ought to be read by anyone with a functioning brain, and should be in every school curriculum (alas, I'm sure it's not in any).
Art Scott
You can bet it's not in the Texas curriculum!
I had (have) his ANNOTATED ALICE from when I had a speech class and memorized Carroll poems. Gardner seems to have ANNOTATED WIZARD OF OZ out there too...
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