{"id":1863,"date":"2010-05-25T13:06:56","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T13:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=1863"},"modified":"2010-05-25T13:06:56","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T13:06:56","slug":"vale-martin-gardner-defending-the-honor-of-the-human-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/vale-martin-gardner-defending-the-honor-of-the-human-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Vale:  Martin Gardner: Defending the honor of the human mind!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The death has just occurred of Martin Gardner (1914-2010), for 25 years (1956-1981) the writer of the superb Mathematical Games column of <em>Scientific American<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 I remember eagerly seeking each new copy of SciAm in my local public library to read Gardner&#8217;s column each month,\u00a0 and devouring all of his books that I could find.\u00a0 His articles interested me despite my general <a href=\"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/2010\/03\/macho-mathematicians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contempt<\/a> for games and competitions, and for <em>ad hoc<\/em> approaches to mathematical reasoning.<br \/>\nScientific American&#8217;s tribute page is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=scholars-and-others-pay-t\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/thebackbench.blogspot.com\/2010\/05\/interview-with-martin-gardner.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a> is a just-posted transcript of a February 1979 conversation between Gardner and other mathematicians. \u00a0 This transcript contains a wonderful statement by mathematician Stan Ulam:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In fact, you know, yesterday Ron Graham gave a marvelous, really interesting lecture about some esoteric question; and I was wondering during it, Well, the question sounds very complicated, why devote so much ingenuity? Then I remember what, I think, Fourier or Laplace wrote: That mathematics\u2014one reason for its being\u2014is to defend the honor of the human mind.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The death has just occurred of Martin Gardner (1914-2010), for 25 years (1956-1981) the writer of the superb Mathematical Games column of Scientific American.\u00a0\u00a0 I remember eagerly seeking each new copy of SciAm in my local public library to read Gardner&#8217;s column each month,\u00a0 and devouring all of his books that I could find.\u00a0 His [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-matherati","p1","y2010","m05","d25","h13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}