[game_preservation] Scientific American puzzles columnist, Martin Gardner, dies at 95

[Devin Monnens]

Martin Gardner, columnist for Scientific American from 1956-1981, died on
Saturday in Norman, OK. After reading his obituary, it becomes clear that he
was one of the brightest minds of the last century.

However, I also found that Gardner's connections with puzzles is of
importance to game history. It's really quite shocking because I was reading
about his work in Scientific American not one week ago. Many of the puzzles
Gardner published in Scientific American (almost all by other people, with
appropriate credit given) were digitized into computer programs. It was the
popularity of his column in Scientific American that lead many computer
scientists to become familiar with these puzzles and to put them on the
computer as exercises in programming and logic. Indeed, many of these
puzzles eventually found their way into *101 BASIC Computer Games*. The most
notable publication was John Conway's The Game of Life (which dominated Bill
Gosper <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gosper>'s work at MIT).

I think it's a little myopic though to think of Gardner's work simply in
terms of puzzles - he did so much more in the realm of philosophy and
debunking pseudoscience. However, the "Mathematical Games" column certainly
was a significant part of his life and had a notable impact on game history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24gardner.html
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24gardner.html>
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/science/20tier.html?_r=1

-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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