cover Gardner, Martin: “Fads and Fallacies” abridged pb photo, originally uploaded by monado.
Martin Gardner has died at age 96 after a career that was both long and useful. He was a fixture in Scientific American’s mathematical puzzles column for twenty-five years.
CORRECTION: Sudoko was probably invented by Howard Garnes. Thanks, Milan!
In the 1950s, he wrote “Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science,” which debunked an extraordinary number of notions, from pseudoscientific and semi-scientific to the nonsensical. The abridged version is above; the full version below.
May 28, 2010 at 15:36
Wikipedia claims a different origin of sudoku:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku#History
What’s the source you consulted for Gardner as its creator?
May 28, 2010 at 16:52
I was going from memory of a blog article so I’m very likely wrong. I remembered that the game went from North America to Japan and back again. So I might just have jumped to the conclusion that it was Gardner, the way famous people get all the good lines.
May 29, 2010 at 07:52
True ’nuff — but no biggy…
June 1, 2010 at 19:40
I read that book c. 1990 I think. It was my introduction to the whole concept of skepticism.
June 11, 2010 at 10:03
It was interesting reading “Fads & Fallacies” and finding about hot things that cooled off totally by the present, and others that are still with us.