Martin Gardner (1914-2010)
As young magicians just starting out we remember buying Mathematics, Magic and Mystery from the local bookstore only to quickly learn every trick within days. The effects and puzzles within are extremely easy yet impossibly effective. Apart from this book, we know very little about Martin Gardner, other than what’s on Wikipedia.
Several years ago a good friend loaned us a copy of The Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic, another book by Martin Gardner which is now long out of print. For nearly 12 hours we went through every page – all 600 – thoroughly marking it up with yellow sticky notes. We look forward to the refined edition of this book with commentaries by Michael Weber to be published by The Miracle Factory sometime in the future.
The video above is titled “The Nature of things” and gives a nice profile of Martin Gardner with long time friend and magician/mathematician, Persi Diaconis.
