Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner Influences Plato, Kant, G. K. Chesterton, William James, Charles S. Peirce, Miguel de Unamuno, Rudolf Carnap, H. G. Wells, Kurt Gödel, Henry Dudeney, Sam Loyd, Bertrand Russell Influenced Douglas Hofstadter, Michael Shermer, Donald Knuth, Raymond Smullyan, Marvin Minsky, John Horton Conway, Persi Diaconis, Ray Hyman, James Randi, Ronald Graham, Dennis Shasha, Ian Stewart Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914 – May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer, with interests also encompassing micromagic, scientific skepticism, philosophy, religion, and literature—especially the writings of Lewis Carroll and G.K. Chesterton. Gardner was best known for creating and sustaining general interest in recreational mathematics for a large part of the 20th century, principally through his Scientific American "Mathematical Games" columns from 1956 to 1981 and subsequent books collecting them. He was an uncompromising critic of fringe science and was a founding member of CSICOP, an organization devoted to debunking pseudoscience, and wrote a monthly column ("Notes of a Fringe Watcher") from 1983 to 2002 in Skeptical Inquirer, that organization's monthly magazine. He also wrote a "Puzzle Tale" column for Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1977 to 1986 and altogether published more than 100 books.