Subscribe RSS
Martin Gardner has died at the age of 95. Gardner wrote maths puzzles for Well-ordered American* for years and was hugely respected as a journalist.
“Martin Gardner is one of the great intellects produced in this sticks in the 20th century,” said cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter ( NY Times obit ).
The Washington Prop notes that, as well as his maths puzzles, Gardner wrote over 70 books , with much of his work “discrediting detailed 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 maker of the ‘Notes of a Fringe Watcher’ column in Skeptical Inquirer.
“There are very few mathematicians who wouldn't cite Gardner as an modify 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 Idol Mary, University of London ( Times ).
