By Dana Richards, with a foreword by Donald Knuth
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Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner was an American writer on popular mathematics and popular science. His interests also encompassed magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature – especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton. He was a leading authority on Lewis Carroll; The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll's two Alice books, was…
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culture · American mathematics and science writer (1914–2010) · science writer · writer · journalist · literary critic · science fiction writer · magician · philosopher · mathematician · science communicator · science journalist · also Martin Gardner, Armand T. Ringer, Gardner
Born 21 October 1914 · Died 22 May 2010 · Q677706
39 published statements · 0 followers
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2023· 1 entry
2010· 6 entries
Died 2010-05-22.
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Was posthumously honored with an award for his contributions in the skeptical field from the Independent Investigations Group
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“Bad science contributes to the steady dumbing down of our nation. Crude beliefs get transmitted to political leaders and the result is considerable damage to society. We see this happening now in the rapid rise of the religious right and how it has taken over large segments of the Republican Party.”
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“Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses”
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And his community of fans grew to span several generations
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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 "need
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2005· 1 entry
Received a 'Lifetime Achievement Fellowship' from the Academy of Magical Arts
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2001· 1 entry
Chose to make it the first chapter of his "best of" collection, The Colossal Book of Mathematics
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2000· 1 entry
And in 2004 Gardner returned to Oklahoma, where his son, James Gardner, was a professor of education at the University of Oklahoma in Norman
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1999· 2 entries
Magic magazine named Gardner one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century"
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MAGIC magazine named him as one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century"
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1998· 2 entries
Published Visitors from Oz, based on the characters in Baum's various Oz books
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“A Quarter Century of Recreational Mathematics.”
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1997· 1 entry
Awarded Joseph A. Burton Forum Award (1997).
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1996· 1 entry
Again with Gardner in attendance
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1992· 1 entry
Awarded David Hilbert Award (1992).
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1987· 1 entry
Awarded Leroy P. Steele Prize (1987).
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1985· 1 entry
"is guaranteed to show up in any poll of magicians' favorite magic books
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1983· 2 entries
“The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener”
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One George Groth panned Gardner's book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener in the New York Review of Books
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1982· 1 entry
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", and in 2011 it added Gardner to its Pantheon of S
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1981· 1 entry
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"
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1979· 1 entry
Gardner left Scientific American
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1976· 2 entries
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 Par
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Joined with fellow skeptics to found CSICOP, an organization promoting scientific inquiry and the use of reason in examining extraordinary claims
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1967· 1 entry
Pitched the idea to Greenwood Periodicals and nominated Dmitri Borgmann as editor
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1961· 1 entry
To ask permission to use his Horseman tessellation in an upcoming column about H
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1959· 1 entry
With The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles & Diversions
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1957· 1 entry
Gardner started writing a column for Scientific American called "Mathematical Games"
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1956· 2 entries
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 mathematic
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And 1957, Gardner began corresponding with mathematicians such as Claude Shannon, John Nash, John Milnor, and David Gale
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1953· 1 entry
Was a managing editor of Polly Pigtails, a magazine for young girls, and also wrote under that name
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1952· 3 entries
Dai Vernon, Jerry Andrus, statistician Persi Diaconis, and polymath Raymond Smullyan
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While working for the children's magazine Humpty Dumpty, he contributed stories written by "Humpty Dumpty Jnr"
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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
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1950· 1 entry
Wrote an article in the Antioch Review entitled "The Hermit Scientist"
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1936· 1 entry
Studied at University of Chicago, Bachelor of Arts (1936).
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1914· 1 entry
Born 1914-10-21.
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