When I was growing up, I was very much an admirer of the late Martin Gardner, who unfortunately passed away this past May. Gardner, who was formally untrained in mathematics, nevertheless influenced and inspired scores of mathematicians and physicists through his numerous articles and over 70 books.

Gardner wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 until his death in 1981, when it was briefly taken over by Pulitzer Prize winning author Douglas Hofstadter (author of Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Your Mind’s I, Methamagical Themas, and as well as other books on A.I. and recreational mathematics).

Gardner was a polymath in the sciences, who wrote on recreational mathematics, philosophy, fringe and quack science, religion, magic, as well as classic books on Charles Dodgson and Frank Baum. His book the Annotated Alice is a must read.

His writings exhibit an extraordinary ability to convey the essence of many mathematically sophisticated topics to a very wide audience. In the words first uttered by mathematician Richard Guy, Gardner has brought “more mathematics, to more millions, than anyone else.”

Gardner’s numerous books and articles on recreational articles always inspired me, and I would like to share with you some fun and recreational mathematics that I have come across that are in the fun and inspirational spirit of Martin Gardner.

Interestingly, there is now a non-profit Foundation devoted to his promoting his passions of recreations of the mind: The Gathering for Gardner, which meets every two years in Atlanta, GA. A link to the Foundation can be found here:

http://www.g4g4.com/about1.html



It should be noted that even though his writings were about “recreational mathematics,” his articles and books, inspired real breakthroughs in mathematics, and both theoretical and applied physics. He certainly was wonderful at promoting interesting concepts that merited the interest and thought of the serious academic community, such as John Horton Conway’s Game of Life. Here is a that displays a link to some of the interesting patterns generated from this artificial life program:

http://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/



So, in the spirit of Martin Gardner, in these blogs, I would like to bring your attention to some amazing people, who do some fun and interesting things in the area of recreational mathematics.

Jeffrey Epstein