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Science Luminary Martin Gardner Dead at 95
From James Randi's blog comes word that science writer Martin Gardner has died at the age of 95. I never met Gardner, but one of his books (Entertaining Science Experiments With Everyday Objects) has been a favorite of mine since I was 6 or 7 years old; I didn't realize until just now quite how many books he authored.
His pages in Scientific American were something I always looked forward to, and from which I always learned something. Glad he was among us.
Before I discovered Martin Gardner's books, I was unable to understand mathematics, and I had very bad grades.
One day, I bought one of his books, and suddenly, I was able to see that math and logic was fun, and we could play with them.
To the amazement of my teachers, my grades increased in a few days, and I wanted to become a mathematician at this moment.
I became a programmer because I wanted to solve some of his puzzles so badly with my computer.
Thanks Martin !
Martin Gardner was one of a kind. I grew up with his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. His book Relativity Simply Explained is what I recommend whenever people ask me for a good intro to relativity. His intelligence and ability to explain were extraordinary compared to a lot of people with much more formal education. He had a long life and seems to have remained sharp and active for almost all of it.
Find free books.
I want to speak for the entire geek community, so I'm posting A.C.
Martin, you will be dearly missed. You've probably changed more lives than you could ever realize, and this planet was a better place because you existed.
Requiescat in pace.
It's guys like Martin that provided some balance against mindless idiots like those on the Texas education boards.
Let's hope there's a thousand more Martins out there. Surely he would hope the same.
RIP.
Martin Gardner was one of the best. Keen intellect, gentle wit, vast knowledge and warm heart. I only met him once, but it was memorable. He will be missed. If he had known the date and hour of his death he would have had a handful of interesting facts tying together all of the numbers. And he would have published it as a puzzle for his readers. Goodbye Mr. Gardner. We will not see your like again soon.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Let me put in a cheer for the "Alice in Wonderland" he annotated.
Phil Plait has a writeup as well.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
What a sad day. A single book that shaped me even in college from a man who could somehow make Mathematics fun. Now I'll never know him personally but I'll always know that a collection of his puzzles put me on track to be who I am today. While writers as popular as Clarke and Sagan shaped me as well, Gardner is in the lesser known category that shaped me just as much if not more.
A near maniacal thirst to algorithmically solve puzzles was instilled in me from his mind via plain old paper.
Rest in peace, Martin Gardner.
My work here is dung.
In the 1970s and early 80s, before the internet, before personal computers, nothing linked geeks together more than Martin Gardner's monthly column in Scientific American. I amazed myself with his binary card deck, and collected matchboxes to make a tic-tac-toe learning computer.
His work will live on. I'm sitting next to a shelf full of his books as I type this.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Martin Gardner is known to many for his writings in recreational mathematics, but I also came to admire his persistent and vigorous work promoting naturalistic and scientific rigor and his work to discredit fringe science and junk science.
Some of the areas he wrote on were creationism, organic farming, Charles Fort, Rudolf Steiner, Scientology, Dianetics, UFOs, dowsing, extra-sensory perception, the Bates method, and psychokinesis.
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952, revised 1957) is a classic and should be required material in our school systems.
>He was of the idea that there is no way to prove the non-existence of god
This is, in fact, correct. In natural sciences it is only possible to show that something does exist. It is not possible to prove non-existatnce. (It is not the case in mathematics, but mathematics is not a natural science).
The easiest way to understand it is to realize that the body observations available to science was taken in a limited period of time and area of space. Thus the our current scientific view of the world is only formally valid in this limited domain. What exist outside of it is only our educated guess.
In his honor, I'd like to link to the 3D paper dragon that was created for Gathering for Gardner.
RIP Gardner.
After he saw one of my first Klein Bottles, Martin Gardner encouraged me to make them for recreational mathematics enthusiasts. "Even if the Klein Bottles don't work out, you'll have fun meeting these folks"
And so began my zero-volume business.
In high school, I followed his instructions to make hexaflexagons and fooled with Knights tours on chess boards. Much later, I was honored to correspond and meet him.
In person, he was just as curious, creative, and encouraging as you would expect from his writing.
Along with others here, I will miss Martin Gardner - his Scientific American articles, his wide ranging books, and his warm support. He leaves a wide wake behind him.
-Cliff