Martin Gardner has died at the age of 95. Gardner wrote maths puzzles for Scientific American* for years and was hugely respected as a journalist.
“Martin Gardner is one of the great intellects produced in this country in the 20th century,” said cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter (NY Times obit).
The Washington Post notes that, as well as his maths puzzles, Gardner wrote over 70 books, with much of his work “discrediting scientific fraud and quackery”. He was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Evaluation of Claims of the Paranormal, along with Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov and author of the ‘Notes of a Fringe Watcher’ column in Skeptical Inquirer.
“There are very few mathematicians who wouldn’t cite Gardner as an influence while they were growing up. He certainly lived a long and rewarding life. In fact he was so old his age was the largest number with only two factors, where the two numbers below it also have only two factors each,” says Matt Parker a mathematician at Queen Mary, University of London (Times).
“Some people reading this are now trying to work out how old he must have been. If you’re not one of them, you won’t mind me spoiling it by revealing that he was 95.”
*Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.
Gardner on Nature
Tackling fuzziness and uncertainty
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Profile: Martin Gardner, the Mathematical Gamester (1914-2010) – Scientific American
Three puzzles from Martin Gardner – Scientific American
Image: wikipedia