Person: Gardner, Martin
Martin Gardner was an American popular mathematics and science writer who had a long-running column on mathematical recreations in Scientific American.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- After graduating from high school, Gardner wanted to study physics at the California Institute of Technology.
- However, the entrance requirements were two years at College so Gardner went to the University of Chicago with the intention of moving to Cal.
- Gardner moved to New York in 1947 and continued to earn a living contributing articles and becoming an editor of Humpty Dumpty.
- The publisher liked the article a lot and asked Gardner if he thought a regular column would be possible.
- We certainly do not want to even list the titles of over sixty works so we will give a selection: Logic Machines and Diagrams (1958); The Annotated Alice (1960); Relativity for the Million (1962); The Ambidextrous Universe: Mirror Asymmetry and Time-Reversed Worlds (1964); Mathematical Carnival: A New Round-up of Tantalizers and Puzzles from "Scientific American" (1975); The Incredible Dr Matrix (1976); Aha! Insight (1978); Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus (1981); Aha! Gotcha: Paradoxes to Puzzle and Delight (1982); The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (1983); Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing (1984); Entertaining Mathematical Puzzles (1986); Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments (1987); Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers (1988); Fractal Music, Hypercards and More (1991); My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles (1994); Classic Brainteasers (1995); Calculus Made Easy (1998); A Gardner's Workout: Training the Mind and Entertaining the Spirit (2001); Mathematical Puzzle Tales (2001); and Bamboozlers (2008).
- In 1981, to celebrate Gardner's sixty-fifth birthday, the book The Mathematical Gardner was published.
- His relationship to the mathematical community makes him unique: Gardner's monthly column in 'Scientific American' has been appearing for more than two decades.
- Martin Gardner's writing has contributed enormously to improve the accessibility of the subject.
- Martin Gardner has captured the attention of his readers, obtained their active involvement, and stretched their minds to an extent which is the envy of all of us who teach.
- Let us end by noting that Gardner has produced a number of mathematical papers, written with leading mathematicians.
- The results Gardner mentions here under (2) appear in the paper "Fan Chung, Martin Gardner and Ron Graham, Steiner trees on a checkerboard, Math.
- The result Gardner mentions under (3) appears in "Lee Sallows, Martin Gardner, Richard Guy and Donald Knuth, Serial isogons of 90 degrees, Math.
- Three papers by Gardner which appear in The College Mathematical Journal are Modeling mathematics with playing cards (2000), Some new results on magic hexagrams (2000), and L-tromino tiling of mutilated chessboards (2009).
- Gardner has received a number of honours for his remarkable contributions including an honorary doctorate from Bucknell University in 1978 and the American Institute of Physics science writer of the year award for 1983.
Born 21 October 1914, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. Died 22 May 2010, Norman, Oklahoma, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Usa, Puzzles And Problems
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
