Friday math movie - Martin Gardner
By Murray Bourne, 18 Jun 2010
Influential mathematician, magician, problem solver and all-round intelligent person Martin Gardner passed away in May 2010. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American for 25 years and was a prolific publisher of books.
Here's my belated tribute.
David Suzuki's Nature of Things featured Martin Gardner. Here it is in 4 installments.
[Be prepared for the irritating burst of white noise plus tone at the beginning and end of each of these sections.]
Update, Jun 2011: It's a shame, but (no doubt) due to copyright reasons, these videos are no longer available.
Apart from Gardner's diverse interests and obvious talent, what impresses me in these videos is Gardner's humility.
RIP.
See the 1 Comment below.
26 Jul 2010 at 8:11 pm [Comment permalink]
RIP Martin.
His columns in Scientific American, together with the books, were the source of my life-long interest in mathematics.
I can still remember making the matchbox automaton from one of his articles (using jelly babies) and teaching it to play the simple game. It was awesome watching the machine improve it's gameplay simply by adding and removing jelly beans.