The Mathemagician

Readers of the current Scientific American are informed of several shattering discoveries. Among them: a fatal flaw in Einstein's special theory of relativity, a motor that runs on psychic energy, and a page from Leonardo Da Vinci's newly discovered notebooks, the Madrid Codices, which conclusively prove that the Renaissance man invented the flush toilet 500 years ago. Respondents who are bombarding the magazine with telephone inquiries and letters are being advised to take a second look at the article. It is sprinkled with names like Ms. Henrietta Birdbrain and Robert Ripoff--as befits an April Fools' piece. Actually, the biggest giveaway is the author's name: Martin Gardner.

At 60, Gardner is the clown prince of science. Several of his card and numerical inventions have become classics on the magicians' and mentalists' circuit. His "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American is one of the few bridges over C.P. Snow's famous "gulf of mutual incomprehension" that lies between the technical and literary cultures. The late Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man) was a devotee; Poet W.H. Auden constantly quoted from Gardner's work. In his novel Ada, Vladimir Nabokov pays a twinkling tribute by introducing one Martin Gardiner, whom he calls "an invented philosopher."

Razor Blades. Nevertheless, as the mathemagician admits, "not all my readers are fans. I have also managed to provoke some outspoken enemies." In the forefront are the credulous victims of Gardner's recent hoaxes: an elaborate treatise that demonstrated the power of pyramid-shaped structures to preserve life and sharpen razor blades, and "proof by a fictional Dr. Matrix that the millionth digit of p--if it were ever computed, would be the number 5. Even angrier are those occultivated believers in extrasensory perception and faith healing. From the beginning of his career, Gardner has been illuminating the dark corners of paranormal science to reveal a phalanx of sleight of handworkers and mail-order Barnums.

The son of an Oklahoma wildcat oil prospector, Gardner learned early to separate wild claims from bedrock actualities. At the University of Chicago, he was known as a demon chess player who quit the game for a greater love: philosophy. "But somewhere, no matter how serious I was," he recalls, "there was always a little boy kicking around inside. Then I sold my first story to Esquire. It wrapped a plot around some shaggy dog stories. Red Skelton mentioned the piece on the air, and the boy and philosopher were off and running."

The serious Gardner published articles on logic and mathematics in such specialist quarterlies as Scripta Mathematica. The playful Gardner became a contributing editor to Humpty Dumpty's magazine, composing games and moral quatrains worthy of Pecksniff: "It pays to be polite, my girl/ In everything you do/ You'll find when you're polite to friends/ They'll be polite to you." Gardner finally curbed his doggerel in the late '50s, when the games column won him his first aficionados. He had already garnered his initial opposition with publication of In the Name of Science, a set of attacks on the sex theories of Wilhelm Reich, the early Scientology of L. Ron Hubbard, the diet of Gayelord Hauser and the mind-reading experiments of J.B. Rhine. Says Gardner: "From then on, every sex, food and pseudoscientific faddist has been after me. Fortunately not everyone falls into those categories." Those who do not include the readers of Gardner's manuals for the layman. Relativity for the Million is by far the most lucid explanation of Einstein's theories. The Ambidextrous Universe clarifies the murky world of parity physics. The little boy reappears in Gardner's lighter works: some 20 collections of intellectual puzzles, a myriad of children's books and articles, and the classic annotated Alice in Wonderland, which 15 years after publication is selling 40,000 copies per annum.

There have been few affinities as close as that of Lewis Carroll and Martin Gardner--both have a playful genius for mathematics and logic, a love of irony, and a detestation of fame. Although conferences have been built round

Gardner's work, he adopts a Carrollian diffidence and refuses to attend. For years, whenever TV or radio programs requested an appearance, he and his wife Charlotte were always "working on something with the boys." The two boys are now grown men who no longer provide their father with an excuse. But by now, Gardner has declined so many invitations that he is seldom bothered. In the aerie of his large house in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. (located, appropriately, on Euclid Avenue), he produces a characteristically varied series of works, including a novel, a series of filmstrips and a book on recreational mathematics. Unfortunately, that volume had no room for Gardner's favorite arithmetical irony: professors at Stanford University have just programmed a computer to carry p to the millionth digit. To everyone's surprise--especially the hoaxer's--the number turned out to be 5.

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