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On October 21, Martin Gardner cel-ebrated his ninetieth birthday. For 25 ofhis 90 years, Gardner wrote the monthly“Mathematical Games “ column for Sci-entific American. His columns have in-spired thousands of readers to learnmore about the mathematics that heloved to explore and explain. Among hiscolumn correspondents were several dis-tinguished mathematicians and scien-tists, including John Horton Conway,Persi Diaconis, Ron Graham, DouglasHofstadter, Richard Guy, Don Knuth, SolGolomb, and Roger Penrose.

Gardner’s columns have earned him aplace of honor in the mathematical com-munity, which has given him manyawards. But he has always declined invi-

tations to accept awards in person, on thegrounds that he is not a mathematician.“I’m strictly a journalist,” he insists. “Ijust write about what other people aredoing in the field.” His modesty is admi-rable, but we insist that he is far morethan a journalist.

In addition to his massive contributionsto mathematics, Gardner has writtenabout magic, philosophy, literature, andpseudoscience. Over his first ninety years,

he has produced more than 60 books,most still in print; many have beenbestsellers. His Annotated Alice has soldover a million copies, and the 15 volumescollecting his “Mathematical Games”columns have gone through severalprintings. All 15 volumes have been digi-tized and will soon be published by theMAA on a single CD entitled MartinGardner’s Mathematical Games.

In his ninetieth year, he has returned toOklahoma, where he was born. He is ingood health and full of energy. We lookforward to more from him as he beginshis second 90 years. What follows is asmall portion of an interview done atGardner’s home in Hendersonville, NCin the fall of 1990 and spring of 1991.

Don Albers: As a high school student youwere already writing articles for TheSphinx, a magazine devoted to magic.Does your interest in magic go back toyour father?

Martin Gardner: Magic wasn’t a specialhobby of his, but he did show me somemagic tricks when I was a little boy. Ilearned my first tricks from him, in par-ticular one with a knife and little piecesof paper on it. I then got acquainted with

a few local magicians in Tulsa, LoganWaite and Wabash Hughes, who workedfor the Wabash Railroad.

DA: At what age did this occur?

MG: I was a high school student at thetime. I’ve never performed magic; it’s justbeen a hobby. The only time I got paidfor doing magic was when I was a stu-dent at The University of Chicago; I usedto work at the Marshall Field’s depart-ment store during the Christmas seasondemonstrating Gilbert magic sets. Ilearned a lot from the experience. Thatwas the first time I realized that you’rereally not doing a magic trick well untilyou’ve done it in front of an audience

about a hundred times. Then it becomessecond nature, and you know what to say.

DA: What are the elements of a success-ful magic trick?

MG: The most important thing is tostartle people, and have them wonderhow it’s done. Close-up magic that youdo on a table right in front of people isvery different from the stage illusionsthat David Copperfield does. It’s close-up magic that most intrigues me, espe-

Master of Recreational Mathematics — and Much More

An Interview with Martin Gardner

By Don Albers

Martin and his younger brotherJim, 1920.

Martin at age 10, 1925.Martin reading on his front porch at age15, 1929

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cially when it has a mathematical flavor.I did a book on mathematical tricks thathas, for example, a chapter on topologi-cal tricks. I did two massive books for themagic profession: The Encyclopedia ofImpromptu Magic and Martin GardnerPresents. The first book covers tricks thatdon’t require any special equipment. Alot of them are just jokes and gags of thetype ‘bet you can’t do this.’

DA: Your book Mathematics, Magic, andMystery has been a bestseller for manyyears.

MG: I waste a lot of time on magic. DaiVernon was one of the great inventors ofmagic. He was a great influence on PersiDiaconis. Persi traveled with Dai for along time. I knew Vernon very well. Iknew Persi when he was a student atNYU. You probably heard the story howhe got into Harvard.

DA: As I recall, he gave you some creditfor writing a letter of recommendationto Fred Mosteller, the Harvard statisti-cian.

MG: Mosteller is a magic buff. WhenPersi said he wanted to get into Harvard,I wrote to Fred and said that Persi cando the best bottom deal and second dealof anybody I know, and that got him intoHarvard. I talked to Fred on the phoneabout it and he said, “Is he willing tomajor in statistics?” And Persi said surehe’d major in statistics if that would gethim into Harvard. So he went up toHarvard, and they had a session together,maybe doing card tricks. Mosteller gothim into Harvard.

DA: What did your mother do?

MG: She was a kindergarten teacher be-fore marriage, but then became a house-wife, caring for three children. Her hobbywas painting, and I have a number of herpaintings hanging in the house. Both ofmy parents lived into their nineties. I hada brother and sister, both younger, whoare deceased.

I learned to read before I went to school.My mother read The Wizard of Oz to mewhen I was a little boy, and I looked overher shoulder as she read it. I learned how

to read that way. It was very embarrass-ing when I was in first grade, because theteacher would hold up cards that said ‘cat’and ‘dog’ and I was always the first to callout the word. She had to tell me to shut

up, to give the other children a chance tolearn how to read.

DA: As a kid, do you remember otherstrong interests in addition to magic?

MG: I was very good at math in highschool. In fact, it and physics were theonly subjects in which I got good grades.I was bored to death by the other classes.I flunked a class in Latin and had to takeit over. I just don’t have a good ear forlanguages.

DA: You got your B.A. in 1936, thenworked briefly for the Tulsa Tribune as areporter, and then came back to TheUniversity of Chicago to the PR officewriting news releases (primarily sciencereleases), and took a graduate coursefrom Carnap. What else did you do untilthe outbreak of World War II?

MG: I had various jobs. I worked as a caseworker for the Chicago Relief Adminis-tration, I had to visit 140 families regu-larly in what was called the Black Belt. Ialso had several odd jobs: waiter, sodajerk, etc. Remember, this was at theheight of the Great Depression.

DA: In December of 1941, the U.S. en-tered World War II and you enlisted inthe Navy.

MG: I ended up serving on DE 134, adestroyer escort, in the Atlantic. I wasmiserably seasick for about three days,and then I was never seasick again. Icouldn’t wait for the war to end, but laterI looked back at it as a rather pleasurabletime of my life. You’re on a ship, youmake friends with your shipmates, yougot liberties now and then, and you didn’thave to worry about anything.

I’ve had migraine headaches all my lifethat were fairly severe when I was in highschool. When I enlisted in the Navy, I didnot list my migraines because I was afraidthey wouldn’t take me. I feared that Imight develop migraine headaches dur-ing battle situations. We were part of aso-called “killer group” of six destroyerslooking for German submarines. Duringmy four years in the Navy, I never had amigraine headache. I’m convinced thatthey’re associated with periods of anxi-ety. When you’re in the Navy, you don’tworry about what you’re going to do to-morrow, what tie to put on, etc. You justfollow orders. In a way, you have a bigsense of freedom. Otherwise, I have noother explanation.

Martin Gardner with the Mad Hatter inCentral Park, New York City.

Gardner as a navy sailor, 1941.Gardner as a navy sailor, 1941.

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DA: At the end of the war, you promptlywent back to Chicago.

MG: Yes, I went back, and I could havehad my old job back in the public rela-tions office at The University of Chicagobecause there was an understanding thatif you enlisted in the service you couldget your old job back. But the one rea-son I didn’t go back to the PR office wasthat I sold a story, my first sale, to Es-quire. The title of the story, “The Horseon the Escalator,” came from a joke go-ing around at the time about a man whoentered Marshall Fields department storeon a horse, and the elevator operator toldhim he couldn’t take the horse on the el-evator. And he said, “But lady, he gets sickon the escalator!” It was a shaggy dog jokeabout a horse. The story is about a manwho collected horse jokes, and his wifedidn’t think any of them were funny, butshe laughed heartily every time he toldone to conceal the fact. So that was myfirst story. I decided that maybe I couldmake a living as a freelance writer, and Ivery quickly sold Esquire a second story,and that was the “No-Sided Professor,”about topology.

DA: That had to give you a lot of confi-dence, helping to convince you that youcould earn a living as a writer.

MG: That’s right, but Esquire changededitors after I had sold them several sto-ries. The new editor had a differentpolicy, and he didn’t care for the kind ofstories I was writing. So I moved to New

York City, because for writers that’swhere all the action is. I had a friend whoworked for Parents’ Institute, and whowas in charge of their periodicals for chil-dren. They were starting a new magazinecalled Humpty Dumpty, and were look-ing for activity features, where you foldthe page or stick something through thepage, or cut; where you destroy the page.So he hired me to do the activity featuresfor Humpty Dumpty, as well as a shortstory for every issue and a poem of moraladvice.

DA: Your work with children’s magazineswent up to about 1956. By 1957 you wereat Scientific American. So there was notmuch of a hiatus between HumptyDumpty and Scientific American.

MG: No, I stopped working for HumptyDumpty to start “Mathematical Games”at Scientific American. I couldn’t do both.It started with the sale in December 1956,of an article on Hexaflexagons. That wasnot a column, but that led to the column.When Gerry Piel, the publisher of Scien-tific American, called me and suggestedthe column. That was when I resignedfrom Parents.

DA: A lot of people are astonished thatanybody could turn out one of those col-umns on mathematical games and rec-reations every single month for ScientificAmerican.

MG: Perhaps they don’t realize I had noother job. I’m not a professional math-

ematician who has to teach a course inmathematics, and then write. To me, it’shard to imagine how a professionalmathematician would have time to evenwrite a book. I had nothing else to do,except research for those columns, andwrite them up.

DA: Most people that I’ve ever talked toabout your Scientific American columnsknow that it was your job, but they’re stillawed by the fact that you turned outsomething really sparkling every month.It’s one thing to write something everymonth, but that doesn’t mean that it’sgoing to be inspirational or great fun toread each time.

MG: I miss doing those columns, theywere a lot of fun, and I met many fasci-nating people while doing them. Oncethe column got started I began hearingfrom people like Sol Golomb and JohnConway, who were really doing creativework that had a recreational flavor. Thatkept the column going. It became muchmore interesting after I began gettingfeedback from people like Conway, RonGraham, Don Knuth, and many others.

Probably my most famous column wasthe one in which I introduced Conway’sgame of Life. Conway had no idea whenhe showed it to me that it was going totake off the way it did. He came out on avisit, and he asked me if I had a Go board.I did have one, and we played Life on theGo board. He had about 50 other thingsto talk about besides that. I thought that

Gardner with his wife Charlotte, andtheir two sons Jim, left, and Tom.

Martin and grandson Martin.Martin Gardner with his brother Jim andsister Judith.

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Life was wonderful — a fasci-nating computer game. When Idid the first column on Life, itreally took off. There was evenan article in Time magazineabout it.

DA: Can you tell me a little bitmore about how you actuallyapproach writing? You previ-ously said something about howyou did your monthly columnsover a long period of time. Youwrite about many other thingsas well. Do you have a differentstyle or a different mode whenyou write about pseudoscience?

MG: I don’t think so. I’ve neverworried about style. I just write asclearly as I can, and I suppose it’simproved over the years. I get in-terested in a topic, and I do asmuch research as I can on it. I havemy library of working tools, so Ican do a lot of research right here.I usually rough out the topic first,just list all the things that I have tosay, and then I sit down and try toput it together on the typewriter.It’s all kind of a sequence that ishard to explain. It comes easy forme, I enjoy writing and I don’t suf-fer from writer’s block, where I sitand wonder for an hour how I’mgoing to phrase the opening sen-tence.

DA: Which of your more than sixtybooks is in some sense a favorite?

MG: I think my Whys of a Philo-sophical Scrivener is my favorite be-cause it is a detailed account of ev-erything I believe.

DA: Let’s move back to math for aminute. You’ve lived long enough now tosee a lot of really interesting mathemati-cal ideas hit the scene, and there are alsosome really beautiful ideas that were herelong before you were on the scene. First,during your own lifetime, what ideas,what discoveries just kind of knockedyour socks off?

MG: Well, I think the most interesting de-velopments are mainly in mathematical

physics, and in particular the develop-ment of superstring theory. That cameas a complete surprise to me. It’s a beau-tiful theory of particles, and it may ormay not be true, but it’s the hottest thingin town now in particle physics. It opensup the possibility that higher dimensionsare not just artifacts but actually real.

DA: You’ve read a lot of contem-porary material, and you’ve reada lot by those who have beengone a long time. Are there anyof those departed people thatyou’d like to sit down with overdinner, or sit down here in yourlibrary and chat with them?

MG: I’d love to chat with Gödelfor example. He had somestrange cosmological views, andI’d like to talk to him about that,about time travel into the past. Inever could quite understandthat. And of course he was adedicated Platonist. He thoughtall of mathematics was outthere, including the transfinitenumbers. I’d enjoy talking tohim about that. Of course I’dlove to talk with Einstein andNeils Bohr. Among puzzle mak-ers, I’d most want to talk withHenry Dudeney and Sam Loyd.I also would enjoy talking toBertrand Russell. He’s one ofmy heroes.

DA: Here’s an equally easy ques-tion for you. Once you’ve de-parted this life, let’s suppose youhad an opportunity to comeback in a hundred years. Whatquestions would you most wantto know the answers to thatmight have been developedduring that time?

MG: I guess I’d be interested toknow if various famous un-solved problems had beensolved, such as the GoldbachConjecture. But I don’t have anygreat desire to come back andlearn what modern mathemat-ics is up to. You’re giving me

credit for being more of a mathemati-cian than I really am. I’m strictly a jour-nalist. I just write about what otherpeople are doing in the field.

Thanks to Jim Gardner for supplying thephotos that accompany this interview.

Gardner doing some table magic

Martin Gardner’s form letter, often sent as a response to re-quests he received from readers.

Martin Gardner regrets that it is impossible for him to:

1. Evaluate:

Angle trisections

Circle squarings

Proofs of Fermat’s last theorem

Proofs of the four-color theorem

Roulette systems

2. Give advice on, or supply references for,

high school science or math projects.

3. Inscribe books for strangers.

4. Give lectures, or appear on radio or TV shows.

5. Attend cocktail parties.

6. Make trips to Manhattan except under

extreme provocation.

7. Donate books to libraries.

8. Provide answers to old puzzles.

9. Prepare material on speculation for toy

companies or advertising agencies.

10. Put the reader in touch with Dr. Matrix.