Editing Martin Gardner (section)

==Influence==
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|quote= His depth and clarity will illuminate our world for a long time.<ref name=princeton_university_press>Princeton University Press: Reviews of Undiluted Hocus-Pocus</ref>
|source= –[[Persi Diaconis]]
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Martin Gardner had a major impact on mathematics in the second half of the 20th century.<ref>Princeton University Press: Reviews of Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: "Martin Gardner occupies a special place in twentieth-century mathematics. More than any other single individual, he inspired a generation of young people to study math."–[[Barry Arthur Cipra]]</ref><ref>Bellos (2010):  He was not a mathematician – he never even took a maths class after high school{{snd}}yet Martin Gardner, who has died aged 95, was arguably the most influential and inspirational figure in mathematics in the second half of the last century.</ref> His column ran for 25 years and was read avidly by the generation of mathematicians and physicists who grew up in the years 1956 to 1981.<ref>Mulcahy (2014):  It's been said that he had a million readers there at his peak.</ref><ref>Malkevitch (2014): Martin Gardner's columns and books have been referenced by huge numbers of research papers that involve mathematics.</ref> His writing inspired, directly or indirectly, many who would go on to careers in mathematics, science, and other related endeavors.<ref>Hofstadter (2010):  Many of today's most influential mathematicians and physicists, magicians and philosophers, writers and computer scientists, owe their direction to Martin Gardner. They may not even be aware of how big a role he played in their development.</ref>{{efn|Eventually, when I was around 12 years old, through my puzzle explorations I of course also had the good fortune of discovering the works of Martin Gardner. They inspired me a huge amount, and gave me something far more enjoyable to do than go to math class! I also read other recreational mathematics and puzzle books, such as those of Raymond Smullyan, and all of these works definitely had a great influence on me as a playing and playful mathematician.}}<ref>Bhargava (2018)</ref><ref>Antonick (2014):  Martin Gardner was well known for inspiring generations of students to become professional mathematicians.</ref><ref name=Antonick_2014>Antonick (2014): "Martin Gardner's column in ''Scientific American'' was one of the two things that, above all others, convinced me I wanted to be a mathematician."–Ian Stewart</ref><ref>Demaine (2008) p. ix: Many of today's mathematicians entered this field through Gardner's influence.</ref><ref>Crease (2018): "As a columnist for ''Scientific American'', Gardner inspired generations of physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, puzzle-makers, logicians, magicians and others, including me."</ref>

Gardner's admirers included such diverse individuals as [[W. H. Auden]],  [[Arthur C. Clarke]], [[Carl Sagan]], [[Isaac Asimov]], [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Stephen Jay Gould]], and the entire French literary group known as the [[Oulipo]].<ref name=Mulcahy_2013>Mulcahy (2013)</ref><ref name=Brown_2010/><ref name=the_economist_2010>The Economist (2010)</ref><ref name=Dirda_2009>Dirda (2009)</ref> [[Salvador Dalí]] once sought him out to discuss four-dimensional [[hypercube]]s.<ref>Mulcahy (2017):  The surrealist artist was intrigued by Martin's writings on the 4-dimensional cube, or tesseract{{snd}}which had been a prominent feature of his own 1954 painting [[Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)]].</ref> [[David Auerbach]] wrote: "A case can be made, in purely practical terms, for Martin Gardner as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. His popularizations of science and mathematical games in Scientific American, over the 25 years he wrote for them, might have helped create more young mathematicians and computer scientists than any other single factor prior to the advent of the personal computer."<ref name=Auerbach_2013>Auerbach (2013)</ref> [[Colm Mulcahy]] described him as "without doubt the best friend mathematics ever had."<ref name=Mulcahy_2017>Mulcahy (2017)</ref>

Gardner's column introduced the public to books such as [[A K Dewdney]]’s ''[[Planiverse]]'' and [[Douglas Hofstadter]]’s ''[[Gödel, Escher, Bach]]''.<ref>AMS Notices (2011)</ref><ref>Malkevitch (2014)</ref>{{efn|The range of wonderful problems, examples, and theorems that Gardner treated over the years is enormous. They include ideas from geometry, algebra, number theory, graph theory, topology, and knot theory, to name but a few.}}<ref>Bellos, Alex (2010)</ref>{{efn|I discovered how good [the columns] really were, covering everything from public-key cryptography to superstring theory. He was the first to cover so many breakthroughs. Gardner was instrumental in spreading the awareness and understanding of [[M. C. Escher|M. C. Escher’s]] work. Gardner wrote to Escher in 1961 to ask permission to use his Horseman tessellation in an upcoming column about [[H.S.M. Coxeter]]. Escher replied, saying that he knew Gardner as author of ''The Annotated Alice'', which had been sent to Escher by Coxeter. The correspondence led to Gardner introducing the previously unknown Escher's art to the world.}}<ref name=Mulcahy_2017/> His writing was credited as both broad and deep.<ref>BBC News (2014):  It went a lot further than puzzles{{snd}}there was substance, depth and a fair share of mystery and wonder in the topics he wrote about.</ref><ref>BBC News (2014):  Penrose tiles are a good example of just how 'nontrivial' the consequences of his puzzle column could be. The materials scientist Dan Shechtman actually won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2011 'for the discovery of quasicrystals'{{snd}}three-dimensional Penrose tiles{{snd}}in some aluminium-manganese alloys.</ref><ref>Hofstadter (2010):  His approach and his ways of combining ideas are truly unique and truly creative, and, if I dare say so, what Martin Gardner has done is of far greater originality than work that has won many people Nobel Prizes.</ref> [[Noam Chomsky]] once wrote, "Martin Gardner's contribution to contemporary intellectual culture is unique{{snd}}in its range, its insight, and understanding of hard questions that matter."<ref name=Brown_2010>Brown (2010)</ref><ref>MacTutor: Gardner has produced a number of mathematical papers, written with leading mathematicians.</ref> Gardner repeatedly alerted the public (and other mathematicians) to recent discoveries in mathematics–recreational and otherwise. In addition to introducing many first-rate puzzles and topics such as [[Penrose tiling|Penrose tiles]]<ref>Kullman (1997): Martin Gardner, in his "Mathematical Games" column in ''Scientific American'' presented "for the first time" a description of the Penrose tiles, including many of Conway's results concerning them.</ref> and [[Conway's Game of Life]],<ref>MAA FOCUS (2010): "Another milestone was in late 1970, when Martin’s column introduced the world to John Horton Conway’s Game of Life"–[[John Derbyshire]]</ref> he was equally adept at writing columns about traditional mathematical topics such as [[knot theory]], [[Fibonacci numbers]], [[Pascal's triangle]], the [[Möbius strip]], [[transfinite numbers]], [[four-dimensional space]], [[Zeno's paradoxes]], [[Fermat's Last Theorem]], and the [[four-color problem]].<ref name=Auerbach_2013/><ref name=hofstadter>Hofstadter (2010)</ref>

Gardner set a new high standard for writing about mathematics.<ref>AMS Notices (2004): "His crystalline prose, always enlightening, never pedantic, set a new standard for high quality mathematical popularization." —Allyn Jackson.</ref><ref>Lister (1995):  Martin Gardner's supreme achievement was his ability to communicate difficult and often profound subjects with a few deft, but human strokes of his pen.</ref><ref>Mirsky (2010): "His writing has been valued by generations of professional mathematicians."–Ian Stewart</ref><ref>Teller (2014): "Gardner writes with authority and ease. You trust him to take you wherever he feels like going."</ref><ref>Hofstadter (2010): Martin had a magical touch in writing about math.</ref> In a 2004 interview he said, "I go up to calculus, and beyond that I don't understand any of the papers that are being written. I consider that that was an advantage for the type of column I was doing because I had to understand what I was writing about, and that enabled me to write in such a way that an average reader could understand what I was saying. If you are writing popularly about math, I think it's good not to know too much math."<ref name=allyn_jackson/> [[John Horton Conway]] called him "the most learned man I have ever met."<ref name=Mulcahy_2013/>