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

[Henry Lowood]

We have Gardner's papers here at Stanford, and yes, there is an 
incredible amount of material in the collection about recreational 
mathematics, including puzzles.

Henry

On 5/24/2010 8:02 AM, Devin Monnens wrote:

> 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/2009/10/20/science/20tier.html?_r=1

>

> -- 

> Devin Monnens

> www.deserthat.com <http://www.deserthat.com>

>

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>

>

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-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator, History of Science&  Technology Collections;
    Film&  Media Collections
HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood

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