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NPR's "Math Guy" Sings Martin Gardner's Praises

Mathematics Awareness Month (MAM) got a plug on April 12 when Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon chatted with NPR "Math Guy" Keith Devlin about Martin Gardner, the inspiration for the theme of this year's MAM.

A quote from Devlin:

And pretty well everybody in my generation who became a mathematician will say that one of the influences that made them do it was reading that column, 'Mathematical Games,' in Scientific American because it was an incredible antidote to the drudgery of school mathematics that we'd been subjected to like everybody else.

Or two:

And I think many of us found it very useful simply to bounce ideas off [Gardner] because something that we might have thought was really complicated, Martin could come back in a flash almost and say, is this what you're saying? Because he was interested in making it simple so he could write about it for a general audience. But often, the mathematician would look at that and think, by golly, you're right. That is what I'm trying to say.

Listen to the conversation.

Start Date: 
Tuesday, April 29, 2014