Scientific American Project - Martin Gardner Bio

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner was born on October 21, 1914. A prolific writer, Gardner has published 70 books to date on topics including: recreational mathematics (our interest here), pseudoscience, magic, philosophy, literature, and even a couple works of fiction. His most recent work of fiction is a story about Oz involving Klein bottles. Gardner is most fondly remembered for his column Mathematical Games, which ran in Scientific American for 25 years.
Gardner has no formal mathematics training outside of high school and even had a hard time passing his high school calculus course. His background is in philosophy, which he studied at The University of Chicago. When asked what he likes about mathematics Gardner responded: “There is a strong feeling of pleasure, hard to describe, in thinking through an elegant proof, and even greater pleasure in discovering a proof not previously known.”
After serving as a yeoman in World War II he became a contributor to Esquire magazine. His first submission was a short story entitled “The Horse on the Escalator.” From Esquire he became assistant editor of the children’s magazine Humpty Dumpty (Humpty was the head editor). After submitting a piece on flexagons to Scientific American in 1956 he was asked to head a monthly column focusing on recreational mathematics.
Gardner claims that the number of puzzles that he has invented could be counted on one hand. He could often be found scouring Manhattan bookstores for books of recreational mathematics that he would use for inspiration. Gardner believes that his column was so successful because of his lack of experience. While writing the column he would also be solving the problem for the first time.
In 1981 Gardner retired from Scientific American to focus on his other passions, mainly debunking pseudoscience. Gardner inspired many a future mathematician with his column which lives on in various collections that have been published since his retirement.