A ConversationWith Martin Gardner AnthonyBarcellos On the last day of Februaryof 1979,Martin Gardner was interviewedby the Two-YearCollege Mathematics Journal. The journal's interviewerwas assistedby a panelconsisting of the TYCMJ editor, Donald Albers; W. H. Freemanmathemat- ics editor,Peter Renz; and mathematiciansRonald Graham, of Bell Laboratories, and StanislawM. Ulam,of the Universityof Floridaat Gainesville.Gardner lookedback overhis twenty-twoyears as themathematical games columnist for ScientificAmerican and forwardto hissixty-fifth birthday and possibleretirement. Originof "Mathematical Games" Barcellos: How did a philosophystudent at the Universityof Chicagoeventually find himselfwriting about mathematicalgames and recreationsfor "ScientificAmerican"? Gardner:It was a combinationof a lifelonginterest in mathematics,without any formaltraining, and just a seriesof accidents. When I was in highschool, my great love was mathematics,and thatwas my highschool major. My hopes wereto becomea physicist.I wrote to Caltech,which was whereI wantedto go,and found thatI had to spendtwo years in collegebefore they would take me. So I wentto theUniversity of Chicago, and thereI gothooked on thephilosophy of science. So insteadof transferringto Caltech I just stayedon at the universityand got a bachelor'sdegree. After I graduatedI wentinto journalism, and thenspent four yearsin theNavy. After that I wentback to Chicagoand did somegraduate work in philosophy,but didn'tget any higherdegree. Then I wentto New York to becomea free-lancewriter, and forthe firsteight years there I was earningmy livingwriting for a magazinefor childrencalled HumptyDumpty; I did their puzzles.And thenI soldan articleon thehexaflexagon to ScientificAmerican. 233 This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions B. Youjust wroteit and sentit offto them? G. I had sold themone previousarticle on logic machines,so I queriedthem aboutthis second piece, explained what a flexagonwas, and theysaid, "Go ahead." So I madea tripto Princetonand interviewedJohn Tukey and BryantTuckerman; theyand ArthurStone and physicistRichard Feynman were the four who did the pioneerwork on hexaflexagonswhen they were undergraduates at Princeton. After thatpiece ran in theScientific American, Gerard Piel, the publisher, called me in and askedme if I thoughtthere was enoughmaterial in thefield of recreational mathematicsto justifya monthlyfeature. At thattime I don'tthink I ownedany bookson recreationalmath at all, but I knewthere was a big fieldout there.I rushedaround New York and boughtall themajor references I could find,like Ball's MathematicalRecreations and Essays, and starteda library.I turnedin a column,Gerry Piel likedit, and thatwas thestart of mycolumn. It was Gerry Piel'sidea. I mustsay thisis aboutthe time that Newman had broughtout The Worldof Mathematics.Nobody expected that these four volumes would become a bestseller, but theydid. Theywent through innumerable printings. So GerryPiel suddenly realizedthere was a tremendousmarket out there.It cameas sortof a revelation. I have enjoyeddoing the column["Mathematical Games"] because I love mathematics,and I havea prettygood head for it in general.The factthat I really don'tknow too muchabout mathematics, I think, works to myadvantage: If I can'tunderstand what I'm writingabout, why my readers can't either. B. Can you explainwhat it is aboutmathematics that makes you like it so much? G. I can'tsay anything different from what mathematicians have said before.It's just thepatterns, and theirorder-and their beauty: The wayit all fitstogether so it all comesout rightin the end. It exercisesyour reason. Almost all the great mathematicianssaid somethinglike that. B. How do you chooseyour topics? G. Well,it's hard to say. I have a lot of thingsin mind.I have a big fileof possiblefuture topics. I tryto picka topicthat is as differentas possiblefrom the lastfew so thatI getmaximum variety from month to month-sortof a surprise element.And thenI tryto picktopics that are halfrecreational mathematics but also lead intowhat I thinkis significantmathematics. B. How didpeople react to your April Fool's joke in theApril 1975 issue? Werethey mostlyamused or mostlydistressed? G. I thinkthat eventually they were mostly amused, but it cameas a tremendous surpriseto me and also to theeditors of themagazine; because when I turnedin thecolumn it seemedinconceivable to me thatanyone could take it veryseriously. I gotseveral thousand letters on it,and thething that startled me mostwas thatI was gettingletters from people who took it all seriouslyexcept for one itemin the -columnthat was in theirspeciality. For example,I got about a thousandletters fromphysicists; and a typicalletter would say, "I enjoyedyour column very much R34 This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and you're doing us a great serviceby lettingus know about these new breakthroughs,but I thinkyou make a terriblemistake in demolishingrelativity." And thenthere would follow four or fivepages of elaborate diagrams showing why myparadox was not a paradoxafter all. The map-coloringthing drew the most letters.A lotof people colored the map and thensent me thecolored map. By the way,that hoax is stillgoing on: Abouta yearago somebodysent me a clipping froman Australianpaper announcing the factthat the four-colortheorem had been provedby Appeland Haken; and thensome reader wrote in and said that thisproof couldn't possibly be truebecause Scientific American had publisheda mapwhich was a counterexample. Albers: Amongyourmany columns are thereone or twothat you are especiallyproud of? G. I particularlyenjoy writing columns that overlap with philosophical issues. For example,I did a columna fewyears ago on a marvelousparadox called New- comb'sparadox, in decisiontheory. It's a veryintriguing paradox and I'm notsure thatit's even yet resolved. And then every once in a whileI geta sortof scoop. The lastscoop that I gotwas whenI heardabout the public-key cryptograph system at MIT. I realizedwhat a big breakthroughthis was and based a columnon it,and thatwas thefirst publication the general public had on it.[The system produces a code thatis, in practice,impossible to break.] B. Do you get manyscoops? G. No, thathappens very rarely. A. Besides all the standardbooks on recreationalmathematics you must have developedother more arcane sources, and also, obviously,a networkof correspondents and consultants. 235 This content downloaded from 131.91.4.38 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:06:15 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions G. That'sright. Aside from the books-and I tryto buyall thebooks that come out on recreationalmath-the second big source is, of course,periodicals. I subscribeto aboutten journals that publish recreational problems, including, of course,the Journal of Recreational Mathematics. The thirdmajor sourceis just a big correspondencewith readers who send me theirideas. It developedvery soon once the columnbecame popular and people interestedin recreationalmath started writingto me. Then if there'ssomething that I don'tquite understand, I rely on mathematiciansthat I' know,like Stan Ulam and Ron Graham,to giveme an opinion. Pseudoscience B. In "Fads and Fallacies"you said, "It is notat all amusingwhen people are misled byscientific claptrap." Do you thinkthings have gotten any bettersince you wrotethat in theearly fifties, or arepeople moresusceptible to pseudoscience than ever before? G. Oh, I thinkthings have gotten tremendously worse in thepast twenty years as faras scienceis concerned.I don'tdiscern any great increase in pseudomathemat- ics. And I don't knowwhy that is. Thereare alwayspeople aroundwho are trisectingthe angle and thingslike that; and, of course,I hear fromthem occasionally.But the interest in pseudoscienceon thepart of the general public has been on an incrediblerise. I have oftenthought of doinga sequel to Fads and Fallacies,but I haven'thad enoughtime. John Wheeler's blast at the AAAS (AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science)is thefirst time, I think, thata majorscientist has takena strongposition on the rise of pseudoscience. Wheelerhad beenattending a conferencein Switzerland.He was speakingon the subjectof quantummechanics and consciousness,and a parapsychologistrushed up to himafterward, embraced him, and said,"I'm so happy,Dr. Wheeler,to learn that you think quantum mechanicsprovides an explanationfor psychic phenomena."Poor Wheeler was takenaback and realizedfor the first time that the papers he had been writinghad been picked up and misinterpretedby the parapsychologists-andthat they were quoting him all overthe place as justifica- tion.So whenWheeler got back and attendedthe AAAS conferencein Houston and foundhimself on thesame panel with Puthoff and Targof StanfordResearch Institute,*who lecturedon clairvoyancetests, and Charles Honorton,a parapsychologistfrom Maimonides, he issueda strongstatement which started out by sayingthat if he had knownthat they were on thepanel he wouldn'thave come. In thepast ten years the situation has gottenso muchworse that funding has been divertedinto crazytheories. He pointedout thatwe now have two thousand professionalastronomers whereas there are twentythousand professional astrolo- gers. So he thoughtit was time for the AAAS to reconsiderwhether the parapsychologistsshould have a specialaffiliation with the organization [AAAS]. * Not affiliatedwith Stanford