Re:Ask HN: Why Martin Gardner is no longer popular?
by tkb on Sunday July 25, 2021 @04:42PM
(#27952753)
I believe many of his books (at least, those which I picked up, I know he wrote many more) were collections of his Scientific American "Mathematical Games" columns.
And as a bit of trivia - when Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel Escher Bach) took over the slot in the early 1980s, he renamed it to the anagrammatic "Metamagical Themas".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Martin_Gardner_Mathema...
One of the most iconic, John Conway's game of life wouldn't be an article today, it'd be swamped by many authors quickly. But many articles still seem unique. Can the hard slogs survive when the icing is gone?
Really I think it's just down to most kids don't get stuck in a library or at home with only SciAm to read anymore.
That sort of information flow is dead. It's pull not push, which Martin Gardner's format doesn't fit. Pull is bit sized.
Equally kids now can read peer review straight from the source and also peoples criticism, SciAm is no longer the gatekeeper, you lose the recreation for better science.