Alex's Adventures in Numberland - Alex Bellos [105]
Gardner opened the door and invited me in. On the wall there was a portrait of him made out of dominoes, a large photograph of Einstein and an Escher original. Gardner was casually dressed in a green shirt and slacks. He had a soft, open complexion, with wisps of white hair, large tortoiseshell glasses and alert eyes. There was an ethereal aspect to him. He was slim and had excellent posture, possibly because he works every day standing up at his desk.
Visiting Gardner felt straight out of The Wizard of Oz. I was in the hurricane-strewn Midwest on a quest to meet an elderly magician. It turned out that Dorothy & co were an especially pertinent reference. I had not known this before I met him, but Gardner is a world expert on L. Frank Baum, the writer of The Wizard of Oz. Gardner told me that a decade previously he had even written a sequel in which Dorothy and friends go to Manhattan. It was reviewed in serious newspapers, if not very favourably. ‘It is written mainly for Oz fans,’ he said.
I gave him the G4G goody bag and asked how it felt to be the subject of a conference. ‘I am quite honoured, and surprised,’ he replied. ‘I am amazed at how it has grown.’ It quickly became clear that he was not entirely comfortable talking about his illustriousness among mathematicians. ‘I am not a mathematician,’ he said. ‘I am basically a journalist. Beyond calculus I am lost. That was the secret of my column’s success. It took me so long to understand what I was writing about that I knew how to write about it so most readers would understand it.’ When I learned that Gardner was not a proper mathematician I initially felt a little disappointed, as though the Wizard had pulled away the curtain.
Gardner’s preferred subject is magic. He described it as his principal hobby. He subscribes to magic magazines and – as much as his arthritis allows – practises tricks. He offered to show me what he said was the only sleight-of-hand card magic he had invented, called a ‘wink change’, in which the colour of a card is changed ‘in a wink’. He took a pack of cards and lodged a black card between the deck and the palm of his hand. Instantly, the black card became a red one. Gardner became interested in maths through ‘mathematical’ magic tricks, and it was magicians, not mathematicians, who formed his main social circle as a young adult. He said he liked magic because it developed a sense of wonder about the world. ‘You see a woman levitated and that reminds you that it is just as miraculous that she falls to the ground by gravity…you don’t realize that gravity is just as mysterious as a woman levitating.’ I asked him if maths gave him that same wonder. He replied, ‘Absolutely, yes.’
Gardner may be best known for his writings on maths, but they represent only a portion of his output. His first book was Fads and Fallacies, the first popular book to debunk pseudoscience. He has written on philosophy and published a serious novel about religion. His bestselling book is pan>The Annotated Alice, a timeless compendium of footnotes to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. At 93, the output shows no signs of slowing down. He is due to publish a book of essays on G.K. Chesterton, and among his many other projects he is compiling a bumper book of word games.
Thanks to Gardner, recreational mathematics remains in very good shape. It is an exciting and diverse field that continues to give pleasure to people of all ages and nationalities, as well as inspiring serious research on serious problems. I had been slightly disheartened to learn that Gardner was not a mathematician, but as I left the Assisted Living Center, it struck me, after all, that it was brilliantly in the spirit of recreational maths that the man who now personifies it was only ever an enthusiastic amateur.