My Martin Gardner testimonial

The Martin Gardner Centennial was in 2014 and I commemorated it on this blog. I also submitted my own testimonial to the official web site and linked to it in this post:

Martin Gardner Centennial & Testimonials

Now I'd like to reproduce my contribution here:

Martin Gardner Testimonials: Testimonial 55: Ralph Dumain

As a teenager I discovered Martin Gardner in the 'Mathematical Games' column of the June or July 1967 issue of Scientific American, having innocently bought it at the corner drugstore on account of my boyhood interest in science. That column featured John Horton Conway’s game Sprouts. From then on I was hooked on Gardner’s columns and related books.

In his June 1968 column Gardner proposed a problem concerning Baker’s Solitaire, and followed up with readers’ solutions in subsequent issues. My name appeared with several others in the September 1968 issue. These acknowledgments were not included when the column was anthologized in Mathematical Magic Show: More Puzzles, Games, Diversions, Illusions and Other Mathematical Sleight-of-Mind from Scientific American in 1977.

Gardner’s columns radiated from the base of recreational mathematics to encompass quite a range of topics. Gardner stimulated my interest in the related hobby of abstract strategy board games, but that was only the beginning. Through Gardner I learned about the artist M.C. Escher, the 19th-century fad of four-dimensional space, anamorphic art, Raymond Llull (the godfather of the ars combinatoria), and numerous other fascinating topics reaching into obscure corners of intellectual history.

Gardner’s literary efforts were wide-ranging, but his other major claim to fame was his contribution to the 'skeptics' movement, decades before that movement was formally organized. I read Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science not long after I discovered Gardner. I returned to this book several times over the decades. I was never fully convinced of Gardner’s criteria for the demarcation of science and pseudoscience. In addition to dealing with obvious crackpots, he delved into fringe areas where rationality bleeds into irrationality, such as Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics, William Reich’s radical psychoanalysis and orgonomy, and Marshall McLuhan’s theory of the media. Still, the range of Gardner’s examples supplied a background I could draw upon throughout my adult life. This book can be said to have stuck with me, but I will forever be indebted to Gardner for all the wonders to which I was introduced via his work on recreational mathematics.

Like so many others I felt a serious loss when Gardner died. I paid tribute to him in my Reason & Society blog, in my podcast of July 19, 2010, and in my web guide to Board Games & Related Games & Recreations. Though my priorities have shifted over the decades, I can still say that Martin Gardner enhanced my life in a particular and unique way. He will always be remembered fondly."

         — Ralph Dumain, librarian and independent scholar, Washington, DC (22 May 2014)

Martin Gardner & the mathematics of joy

The Martin Gardner Home Site continues to expand in the year of the Martin Gardner Centennial 1914-2014. You can follow the Twitter account for constant updates on all things Martin Gardner. I checked up on Martin Gardner's Puzzle Books. Then I wrote the following.

I think a number of these puzzle books are not present in my Martin Gardner collection. I get a lot of input on MG as this is his centennial year. Of course, he is known for his contributions to the skeptics movement as well as his expertise as a magician and his annotated publications of classic works, but it is still his role in the area of mathematical recreations and popularization that garners the lion's share of devotion. Though an amateur without professional credentials or expertise, professional mathematicians consider him one of the most important mathematical figures of the 20th century.

I thought about this in conjunction with just having watched a video of Sonny Rollins explaining why jazz matters, in the wake of a New Yorker spoof of jazz published under his name without permission. It is interesting, and important I think, that Martin Gardner has had the impact he has, considering how many people find mathematics a dry subject. The key to this is that he not only educated people, not only provided them with intellectual stimulation, but he made them happy! He made me happy. The constant factor in everyone's tributes to him is . . . joy!

When I ponder this, I am very moved. These things matter.

Albrecht Dürer, Sprouts, Martin Gardner

"The triumph of melancholy: 500 years of Dürer's most enigmatic print" by Karl Galle, The Guardian, 16 May 2014

 "As mathematicians meet in New York to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Dürer's print Melencolia, Karl Galle asks whether it is a depiction of despairing genius or of scholarly optimism"

Martin Gardner is not mentioned in this article,  but this event is right up his alley. I was introduced to many interesting cultural artifacts via Martin Gardner, including this one.

I was introduced to John Horton Conway's game of Sprouts with the July 1967 issue of Scientific American, the first issue I ever bought and my introduction to Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column. If you follow the links from the Wikipedia page, you will see how much progress has been made in the mathematical analysis of the game. It is a simple yet fascinating pencil-and-paper game. This is but one of my many debts to Martin Gardner.

Martin Gardner Centennial & Testimonials

This year marks the centenary of Martin Gardner's birth. Check out this new web site in homage to Gardner:

Martin Gardner Home Site (Martin Gardner Centennial 1914-2014)

There is also a web page for testimonials:

Martin Gardner Testimonials

My testimonial is #55.

Note also this National Public Radio broadcast:

Martin Gardner, Genius Of Recreational Mathematics
NPR, April 12, 2014 (sound file & transcript)

Weekend Edition's own "Math Guy" Keith Devlin calls the late Martin Gardner the greatest "math guy" of all time. As Devlin tells NPR's Scott Simon, Gardner had little formal mathematics training.

Martin Gardner, mathematical games, & me

In my obit for Martin Gardner, I mentioned my teenage devotion to his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American, which I discovered in 1967 after picking up a copy of the magazine in my local drugstore. In his June 1968 column he proposed a problem concerning Baker's Solitaire, and followed up with readers' solutions in subsequent issues. My name appeared with several others in the September 1968 issue, but as these acknowledgments were not included when the column was anthologized in Mathematical Magic Show: More Puzzles, Games, Diversions, Illusions and Other Mathematical Sleight-of-Mind from Scientific American in 1977, I reproduce said acknowledgment here:

“Mathematical Games: Counting Systems and the Relationship between Numbers and the Real World” by Martin Gardner [Excerpt including acknowledgments for solutions to Baker's Solitaire problem]

Other than winning medals or certificates for scholastic achievement and spelling bees, this was one of my first of many trivial claims to fame. I think I once got a letter published in Superman comics when I was a kid. And I once sent a purportedly clever letter with photos to Mad Magazine, but that was a bust. Anyway, this was my sole interaction with Martin Gardner, now preserved for the ages.

See also this section of my games web guide:

Homage to Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914 – May 22, 2010)
Mathematical Games Web Links

Martin Gardner Dead at 95

Martin Gardner is no more. Say it ain't so. I discovered Martin Gardner in the Mathematical Games column of Scientific American, having innocently bought it off the newsstand because of my boyhood interest in science. I think the issue I bought was June or July 1967: his column that month was about John Horton Conway's game "Sprouts". And then I was hooked. My name was published in one issue of Scientific American for my solution of some problem involving "Baker's Solitaire". Names were omitted though, when said article was reprinted in one of Gardner's anthologies. Gardner's columns radiated from the base of recreational mathematics to encompass quite a range of topics. Gardner stimulated my interest in the related hobby of abstract strategy board games, but that was only the beginning. Through Gardner I learned about the artist M.C. Escher, the 19th-century fad of 4-dimensional space, anamorphic art, the godfather of the ars combinatoria Raymond Llull, and numerous other fascinating topics reaching into obscure corners of intellectual history. I also read several of Gardner's books in addition to his collections of Mathematical Games columns, most memorably Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.

Gardner is also known for The Annotated Alice and other volumes, but his two biggest claims to fame are probably his contributions to recreational mathematics and to the "skeptical" movement. I returned to Fads and Fallacies several times over the decades. I was never fully convinced of Gardner's criteria for the demarcation of science and pseudoscience. In addition to dealing with obvious crackpots, he delved into fringe areas where rationality bleeds into irrationality, such as Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics, William Reich's radical psychoanalysis and orgonomy, and Marshall McLuhan's theory of the media. Still, the range of Gardner's examples supplied a background I could draw upon throughout my adult life. This book can be said to have stuck with me, but I will forever be indebted to Gardner for all the wonders to which I was introduced via his work on recreational mathematics.

Martin Gardner, 95, a journalist, provided in-depth analysis of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat