Tribute to Martin Gardner

Reprint from Scientific American, regarding Martin Gardner, who died yesterday (age 95):

Martin Gardner, the mathematical gamester


This image is a Penrose tiling, one of the things that Gardner brought to light in his "Mathematical Games" column.

One thing that I haven't seen in the obits is a mention of Dr. Matrix, Gardner's numerological doppleganger.


Dr. Matrix was famous enough that he even has his own Wikipedia entry: Irving Joshua Matrix

His Dr. Matrix columns were uniformly hilarious. I always wished there'd been a digital representation of Iva. (I looked around but couldn't find any excerpts online; I guess I'll have to revisit the bookstore.)

Gardner was also a famous and true skeptic, and those who profess skepticism but whom are really just denier-bots could learn something from him. If they were capable of actual learning, that is.

Added this in the 2nd go-round: Column about recognizing pseudoscientists:

Hermits and Cranks

(2) "A second characteristic of the pseudo-scientist, which greatly strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia," which manifests itself in several ways:

(1) He considers himself a genius. (2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads....(3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to "enemies" for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work....(4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories.

This is SOOOO true of global warming deniers. Especially the smart ones.