Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner has always denied that he is a mathematician. Nonetheless, for thirty years (1956-1986) he wrote a column on mathematical games and recreations for Scientific American. He covered such topics as hexaflexagons, fractals, Conway's Game of Life, memorization tricks, and magic squares, always with wit and humor. The columns were collected in a series of books, which I devoured in my youth. Most good libraries have them (in fact, that's part of the definition of being a good library, to my mind), but I've only been able to acquire two or three of them for my own collection.

Anyway. Today I got the yearly catalog of the Mathematical Association of America. On page 9, there is an announcement that next month they will be issuing a CD including the contents of every single one of Gardner's columns from SciAm; the member's price is $43.95.

I'm drooling.

(There are a bunch of other goodies in the catalog, too. I think I'm going to have to struggle to restrain myself.)