{"id":1136,"date":"2010-05-23T07:37:38","date_gmt":"2010-05-23T11:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2010-05-23T07:37:38","modified_gmt":"2010-05-23T11:37:38","slug":"martin-gardner-has-passed-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/05\/23\/martin-gardner-has-passed-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Gardner has Passed Away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"Martin Gardner\" src=\"http:\/\/www.randi.org\/site\/images\/stories\/gardner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"275\" \/>Martin Gardner has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.randi.org\/site\/index.php\/swift-blog\/995-my-world-is-a-little-darker.html\">passed away<\/a>.\u00a0 I know I am not the only person in operations research who was inspired by Gardner&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ansible.co.uk\/misc\/mgardner.html\">Mathematical Games<\/a> columns in <em>Scientific American<\/em>.\u00a0 I have a strong memory of whiling away long high school physics classes reading Gardner&#8217;s columns (and thankful that patient and insightful physics teacher had a stack of <em>Scientific Americans<\/em> and did not mind my lack of attention to his teaching).\u00a0 A large number of the columns were really about operations research problems:\u00a0 &#8220;What is the best way to do this?&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;How few moves are needed to accomplish that?&#8221;\u00a0 It is through his columns that I understood the breadth and beauty of mathematics, and how that world was accessible even to a high school student.\u00a0 And that high school students and professional mathematicians could work on the same problem and each have something to contribute.<\/p>\n<p>When I went to university, it took me some time to find the type of mathematics that inspired what Gardner inspired.\u00a0 I found it in operations research, and I am thankful for Martin Gardner for showing me what to look for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Martin Gardner has passed away.\u00a0 I know I am not the only person in operations research who was inspired by Gardner&#8217;s Mathematical Games columns in Scientific American.\u00a0 I have a strong memory of whiling away long high school physics classes reading Gardner&#8217;s columns (and thankful that patient and insightful physics teacher had a stack of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/05\/23\/martin-gardner-has-passed-away\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Martin Gardner has Passed Away&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituary","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}