Martin Gardner—Magician
        Image: Gary O'Brien (1993) "Card magic, and magic in general, owe a far greater debt to Martin Gardner than most conjurors realize"—Steve Minch
Martin's first publication was a magic trick for the
Sphinx in May of 1930. He was fifteen years old, and would go on to
publish for a further 80 years, in a bewildering breadth of fields. The last
publication in his lifetime was a magic trick that he contributed to the May 2010
issue of Word Ways.
Happily, both tricks can be found together in this
80 Years of Gardner Magic article by Jerry & Karen Farrell.
There is a listing of Martin's primary magic publications at Genii Magicpedia.
The extent of his influence in the magic community can be judged by the comments of his peers and
disciples.
Martin's magical interests were focussed on table and close-up magic, and from
the 1930s on, he published a lot of original magic. He is well known for
innovative tapping and spelling effects, with and without cards, and was most
proud of his Wink
Change.
Martin never performed magic professionally, except during a few Christmas
seasons in the mid 1930s as a student, when he could be found entertaining
shoppers in Marshall Fields's department store in Chicago.
Martin's second published book—though the third he wrote—was Mathematics, Magic and Mystery (Dover, 1956), which
is still viewed as a classic almost 60 years later.
The Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic (Magic Inc, 1978), which runs to
574 pages, collects magic effects that Martin published in Hugard's
Magic Monthly between Mar 1951 and Apr 1958.
The 415-page Martin
Gardner Presents (Kaufman and Greenberg, 1993) collects a great deal of
Martin's contributions to (quoting from Max Maven's Introduction)
"intraprofessional magic journals."
He was listed in the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century" by
MAGIC magazine (Jun 1999, p60). In 2005, Martin received the "Lifetime
Achievement Award" from the
Academy of Magical Arts, the Magic Castle, Hollywood, CA.
Output /
Mathematics, Magic and Mystery /
Influence /
Math Awareness Month (Apr 2014)
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