Martin Gardner definitely influenced me. One of the best presents that I ever got was in 1957, when I was 10, a friend of the family gave me a copy of the (brand new) book, "Mathematical Puzzles and diversions". I remember constructing all sorts of flexagons, etc. The sheer joy of all these puzzles went a long way to making me choose mathematics as a career. Victor On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 8:00 AM, Robert Baillie <rjbaillie@frii.com> wrote:
Martin Gardner was definitely one of the figures who influenced me.
It's a tragedy that today's generation doesn't have a Martin Gardner to inspire them in math. (On the other hand, higher-income kids could have access to Mathematica, Maple, etc.)
It's also pretty pathetic to pick up a recent copy of Scientific American and see what has become of that formerly great magazine... No mathematical content whatsoever.
Bob Baillie
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rcs@xmission.com wrote:
Today's NYTimes has a short appreciation of Martin Gardner.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/science/20tier.html
[If you haven't signed up for Exclusive(!) Online Access, try googling "For Decades, Puzzling People With Mathematics" to get the article.]
I found it a bit thin, but it does recall the puzzle about how he was able to inspire so many kids to go into math. Maybe the key is having math as a hobby.
Rich
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