RIP: Martin Gardner 1914-2010

[julesjones]

Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses in a toast to the life and works of Martin Gardner. He died yesterday, after a long and fruitful life during which he showed many, many people that mathematics could be *fun* -- and in doing so, helped a little to shape the world as we know it.

I spent many happy hours in my high school library browsing the back copies of Scientific American, mostly to read his Mathematical Games columns. As a teenager I nigh on wore out their copies of his books, and as an adult have three of them in my personal library -- and more recreational mathematics books by other authors about concepts I first met in his column.

I haven't made a flexagon for years. Time to remedy that...

Wikipedia biography, with the usual Wikipedia caveats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner

Comments

[mishalak]

Actually I might remember him by re-reading my copy of The Annotated Alice.

[caper_est]

Yeah, rats. Me too - I owe him the idea of playing with maths for the joy of it, and the beginning of my taste for paradoxes. Good man, merry magician, will be much missed.

[shaolingrrl.livejournal.com]

I saw that yesterday. :-(

[julesjones]

I think a lot of my flist will be having a quiet moment in his memory today.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I too have fond memories of "Mathematical Games", and especially of Dr IJ Matrix and his daughter Iva. :)