Martin Gardner Bibliography

[Bill Mullins]

I've been aware of this project, from Dana Richards, for at least 15 years (and have made a couple of minor contributions to it). He once gave me a printout of it when it was only a file in his computer, but it is now commercially available.

link

[Tom Sawyer]

Hi All,

The above post of Bill’s reminded me of something that I think may be an unpublished project of Martin Gardner’s from long ago (like decades). I’m sure that “somewhere” I have correspondence related to it, but anyway Martin created more than forty annotations for a planned reprint of Professor Hoffmann’s Puzzles Old and New. I have a copy of the annotations.

I am almost positive that Martin also wrote an introduction for the book, but if so, I’m not sure where my copy is.

I actually was able to help him somewhat on that project, and he sent me an inscribed copy of one of his books, where the inscription said “thanks for help on Hoffmann,” or something like that.

Maybe the introduction and footnotes have been published, but I have never heard of that happening. (I'm not in a position to distribute any of that in any way, but I would tend to assume that the final versions are among his papers, wherever those are.)

—Tom Sawyer

[Edward Pungot]

Looks like Stanford has a bunch of his stuff
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4822392

Martin Gardner Papers Table of Contents
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt6s20356s/

[Bill Mullins]

Tom -- might I suggest that you contact the bibliographer, Dana Richards, about this? I'll send you his email address off-line.

Edward -- the link mentions that they bibliographer had access to the Stanford files.

[MagicbyAlfred]

I finally decided to read up a bit on this incredibly fascinating man. I was amazed to learn that, despite inspiring and profoundly influencing many mathematicians, physicists and other scientists with his math-based writings, including a regular, wildly popular column in Scientific American that ran for 25 years ("Mathematical Games"), he never took a math course after high school. His only advanced degree was not in mathematics, but a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. I knew that he was prolific and extraordinarily well-rounded, but I hadn't realized that he had authored and/or edited over 100 books and countless articles, columns and reviews.

[Richard Kaufman]

He was also an extraordinarily nice guy.

[MagicbyAlfred]

He was also an extraordinarily nice guy.

Most importantly.

[Bob Farmer]

One night when I was writing the Ten Card Deal book and way into the zone without any idea of what time it was, I called Martin with some questions. We had a wonderful discussion and then in answer to something, Martin said he had to turn the light on to look something up. It was then I realized how late it was. Whatever happened to his legendary card index?

[Richard Kaufman]

Todd Karr got it, I believe.

[Bill Mullins]

I was amazed to learn that, despite inspiring and profoundly influencing many mathematicians, physicists and other scientists with his math-based writings,

Not only was he an important figure in recreational math, but also in magic (obvious to everyone here; specifically impromptu magic and mathematical magic), origami (see, for example, this), the skepticism movement (see his 1952 book In The Name of Science), Lewis Carroll studies (The Annotated Alice), L. Frank Baum and Oz studies (he wrote the first biography of Baum), cellular automata (his publication of John Conway's The Game of Life in his Scientific American column), and annotation of literature (again, see his Annotated Alice).

[erdnasephile]

One night when I was writing the Ten Card Deal book and way into the zone without any idea of what time it was, I called Martin with some questions. We had a wonderful discussion and then in answer to something, Martin said he had to turn the light on to look something up. It was then I realized how late it was. Whatever happened to his legendary card index?

A part of it is reproduced in the "Gardner's Notes" section of "Impromptu" (but you'd better have a magnifying glass).

A tangent: Did Max Maven have a similar (? computerized) system to catalog his vast knowledge or did he keep it all in his head?