马丁·加德纳1914—2010

生平

他生于美国俄克拉荷马州的塔尔萨（Tulsa）。1936年，毕业于芝加哥大学哲学系。在进入大学之前，他是一个新教原教旨主义者。通过理性的思考，在大学期间他的信仰发生了变化，后来他成了一位哲学有神论者。毕业后他在家乡的《民友报》担任记者。二战期间，他成为美国海军的随军记者。战后，他继续从事自由撰稿人和编辑工作。他的主要工作是1957年到1981年在《科学美国人》的长期专栏作家，他所包办的“数学游戏”专栏，成为该杂志的一个“特色产品”。

被翻译为中文的作品

• 《跳出思路的陷阱》
• 《密码传奇》
• 《人人都能懂得的相对论》
• 《表里不一的宇宙》
• 《好科学、坏科学、伪科学》
• 《不可思议的矩阵博士》
• 《数学狂欢节》
• 《啊哈？灵机一动》
• 《从惊讶到思考——数学悖论奇景》
• 《矛盾集锦》 原名：Paradox Box
• 《数学推敲》
• 《打开魔数箱》

Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914 – May 22, 2010) was an American writer on popular mathematics and popular science. His interests also encompassed magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature – especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton. He was a leading authority on Lewis Carroll; The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll's two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies. He had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and in 1999, MAGIC magazine named him as one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century". He was considered the doyen of American puzzlers. He was a prolific and versatile author, publishing more than 100 books.

Gardner was best known for creating and sustaining interest in recreational mathematics—and by extension, mathematics in general—throughout the latter half of the 20th century, principally through his "Mathematical Games" columns. These appeared for twenty-five years in Scientific American, and his subsequent books collecting them.

Gardner was one of the foremost anti-pseudoscience polemicists of the 20th century. His 1957 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science is a seminal work of the skeptical movement. In 1976, he joined with fellow skeptics to found CSICOP, an organization promoting scientific inquiry and the use of reason in examining extraordinary claims.