This essay was read at the first Gathering for Gardner, held in 1993 in Atlanta
A Tribute to Martin Gardner, 1914-2010
For 25 years, he wrote Scientific American 's Mathematical Games column, educating and entertaining minds as well as launching the careers of generations of mathematicians
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May 25, 2010
Douglas Hofstadter is the Pulitzer Prize – winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, and holds the position of College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science at Indiana University Bloomington.
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5 Comments
Add CommentAll that Dr. Hofstadter relates is parallel to my experience. Although I can claim no such eminence as he, I did experience a kind of companionship with Mr. Gardner over the decades, as he reliably answered all of my correspondences over the decades, including my implausible attemps at 4D tic-tac-toe and four-color theorem proofs. He helped make the world safe for people like me who found passion in mathematics. Martin Gardner was my hero.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a wonderful tribute by Douglas Hofstadter, to a wonderful person, Martin Gardner!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you, SciAm, for republishing it.
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There are many wonderful tributes on the web this week; this, from a hero, to his hero, is especially touching and wonderful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would suggest that university chairs, in honor of Martin Gardner and his work, be set up at various prestigious American Universities such as MIT, Cal Tech and Carnegie Mellon, for the production of people like him but it would probably only result in a generation of happy, tenured non-entities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRichard Feynman said that one day he realized that he would never get anywhere in physics by doing what everyone else was doing so he might as well just have fun and do whatever he wanted for the rest of his life. We all know what happened.
John Conway does mathematics in a similar way.
Martin Gardner was such a spirit. My guess is that he was simply a lucky genius like Feynman was, and John Conway and other contemporaries are.
That's not easy to reproduce. But we will all do well to continue to emulate these men and continue to be inspired by them as well.
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A great tribute to a great man by a great man.
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