Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner , the master of mathematical games and pastimes, founded with James Randi and Paul Kurtz, The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, was a mathematical games columnist for Scientific American from 1956 to 1981 , and is an author of more than seventy books.

Summary

[ disguise ]

• 1 Biography
• 2 Work
  • 1 Scientific American Compilation Books
  • 2 Books About Pseudosciences
  • 3 Other Scientific Books
  • 4 Riddles, Paradoxes and Others
• 3 Two Curiosities
• 4 Sources

Biography

Martin Gardner was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma (United States), on October 21 , 1914 . He studied Philosophy and then began his career as a journalist and writer. After the Second World War he dedicated himself to freelance writing, both collaborating in newspapers and magazines and writing informative and scientific books.

His relationship with recreational mathematics began publicly in 1956 , the year in which he began publishing a monthly column in Scientific American magazine called Mathematical Games. From this date until 1981 Gardner dealt with all kinds of problems, hobbies and paradoxes related to mathematics. The high quality of his articles and his eminent informative nature made him rise to fame in the mathematical panorama, allowing him to carve out a place in this complicated and restrictive world.

He retired after a prolific life as an essayist and columnist, and moved to live in a residence. The retirement was not total since Gardner, who between 1983 and 2002 maintained a column dedicated to the world of mystery in The Skeptical Inquirer, returned to activity in 2006 to give his vision of the controversial recovery of repressed memories that he made, at the end of the 80s and early 90s, when numerous false cases of child sexual abuse came to light in the United States.

A consequence of his love for science is his constant fight against pseudoscience and the so-called paranormal phenomena, so popular in the US and about which he has written several books. With that same purpose he founded, together with Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov and others, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims about the Paranormal. He died on May 22, 2010 at the age of 95 in Norman, Oklahoma (United States) .

Construction site

In his column in Scientific American we were able to find articles of all kinds related to mathematics: about flexagons (his first article in said column), Conway’s game of life, polyominoes, the Soma cube, tangrams, Escher… all very very topics. typical of recreational mathematics with which he generated very well structured articles and with which he managed to engage all types of people.

He is the author of more than 70 books, mainly dedicated to recreational mathematics (many of them compilations of his Scientific American articles), although he has also written about philosophy, paranormal phenomena (with the aim of unmasking scientific frauds) and a version annotated from Alice in Wonderland.

Scientific American Compilation Books

These books are the fundamental core of Martin Gardner’s work. They collect his monthly articles that appeared in Scientific American, forming an essential collection to savor the mathematical, logical, and artistic fields, and have an entertaining time. Generally, each chapter corresponds to a monthly article, which Martin Gardner modifies by incorporating corrections, additions and comments from people who have written to him giving their opinion on the topic covered. There is no news that his first two compilations have been published in Spain. But they can be found in online bookstores; Its titles are: Hexaflexagons and Other Mathematical Diversions and The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions.

The fourth compilation book, The Magic Numbers of Dr Matrix, was dedicated exclusively to the articles of Dr Matrix, a strange and curious character who appeared for the first time in the January 1960 issue. Later, in 1985, he put together all of his appearances. in an updated volume that was published in Spain under the title Games: The Magical Numbers of Doctor Matrix (Editorial Gedisa, 1987 )

• New Mathematical Diversions (1961)
• The Unexpected Hanging and Other Mathematical Diversions , 1969
• Extraterrestrial Communication and Other Mathematical Hobbies (Six Book of Mathematical Diversions, 1971 )
• Mathematical Carnival ( 1975 )
• Mathematical Magic Festival (Mathematical Magic Show, 1978 )
• Mathematical Circus5 (Mathematical Circus, 1979 )
• Wheels, Life and Other Mathematical Amusements ( 1983 )
• Knotted Donuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments , 1986
• Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments , 1987
• Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers , 1989

Books About Pseudosciences

His first book on pseudoscience was In the Name of Science ( 1952 ), which he later published in a corrected paperback edition, with the title: Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science , 1957 . Also a classic of his is his How Not to Test a Psychic , a detailed study of how poorly designed the extrasensory perception tests that the Czech medium Pavel Stepanek was subjected to were. The books that follow are compilations of articles, most published in magazines such as Skeptical Inquirer , The New York Review of Books, and Free Inquirer .

• Science: the good, the bad and the false (Science: Good, Bad and Bogus, 1981 )
• Order and Surprise (Order and Surprise, 1983 )
• The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher , 1991
• Extravagances and nonsense (On the Wild Side, 1992 )
• Urantia, divine revelation or publishing business (Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery, 1995)

Other Scientific Books

• The Relativity Explosion ( 1976 )
• The Sacred Beetle I and II (The Sacred Beetle, 1984 )
• Logic Machines and Diagrams (Logic Machines and Diagrams, 1982 )
• The New Ambidextrous Universe 1 and 2 (The New Ambidextrous Universe, 1991 )
• The Why of a Philosophical Scrivener , 1983

Riddles, Paradoxes and Others

This part of Martin Gardner’s bibliography includes his most fun and entertaining books, where games, puzzles, hobbies… and magic are an essential part.

• AHA! (Aha! Insight, 1978 )
• AHA! Thought-provoking paradoxes (Aha! Gotcha: Paradoxes to Puzzle and Delight, 1982 )
• Intelligent magic (Mathematics, Magic and Mystery, 1956 )
• Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd , 1959
• More Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd , 1960
• The language of spies (Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing, 1985 )
• Mathematics for fun (Entertaining Mathematical Puzzles, 1986 )
• Fun and Surprising Puzzles (Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers, 1988 )
• Games and enigmas from other worlds (Puzzles from Other Worlds, 1984 )
• Martian Chronicles and Other Essays on Fantasy and Science (Gardner’s Whys and Wherefores, 1989 )
• Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass (The Annotated Alice; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, 1998 )

Two Curiosities

Martin Gardner is often cited on the Internet, as many of the topics he discusses have given rise to important mathematical studies or popular entertainment. However, there are few pages dedicated exclusively to him. Below are two pages that contain two curiosities that have to do with one of Martin Gardner’s hobbies: anagrams and inversions.