Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games column in Scientific American fascinated and mystified readers for decades—and his legacy continues to bring mathematicians, artists and puzzlers together.Gardner had no formal mathematical training, and his path to science and math writing was a strange one. “He started out as a child magician, and the last thing he published was also a magic trick, about a month before he died,” says Colm Mulcahy, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Spelman College. “He started and finished with magic.” But in between Gardner had an 80-year publishing…
