{{infobox writer | name

Martin Gardner | image Martin Gardner.jpeg | imagesize | caption | pseudonym George Groth | birth_name | birth_date October 21, 1914 | birth_place Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA | death_date May 22, 2010 | death_place Norman, Oklahoma, USA | resting_place | occupation Author | nationality United States | ethnicity | alma_mater University of Chicago(BA, 1936 & > 1 yr graduate classes) | period 1950-2010 | genre Puzzles, popular mathematics, stage magic, debunking | movement Scientific skepticism | notableworks ''Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science''; "Mathematical Games" (''Scientific American'' column); ''The Annotated Alice''; ''The Ambidextrous Universe'' | influences Plato, Kant, G. K. Chesterton, William James, Charles S. Peirce, Miguel de Unamuno, Rudolf Carnap, H. G. Wells, Kurt Gödel, Henry Dudeney, Sam Loyd, Bertrand Russell | influenced Douglas Hofstadter, Michael Shermer, Donald Knuth, Raymond Smullyan, Marvin Minsky, John Horton Conway, Persi Diaconis, Ray Hyman, James Randi, Ronald Graham, Dennis Shasha, Ian Stewart | signature }}

Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the ''Mathematical Games'' column in ''Scientific American'' from 1956 to 1981, the ''Notes of a Fringe-Watcher'' column in ''Skeptical Inquirer'' from 1983 to 2002, and published over 70 books.

Biography

Gardner, son of a petroleum geologist, grew up in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma. He attended the University of Chicago (UC) where he earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1936. Early jobs included reporter on the ''Tulsa Tribune'', writer at the UC Office of Press Relations and case worker in Chicago's Black Belt for the city's Relief Administration. During World War II, he served for several years in the U.S. Navy as a yeoman on board the destroyer escort ''USS Pope (DE-134)'' in the Atlantic. His ship was still in the Atlantic when the war came to an end with the surrender of Japan in August 1945.

After the war, Gardner returned to UC. He also attended graduate school for a year there, but he did not earn an advanced degree. In 1950 he published an article in the ''Antioch Review'' entitled "The Hermit Scientist," a pioneering work on what would later come to be called pseudoscientists. It was Gardner's first publication of a skeptical nature and two years later it was published in a much expanded book version: ''In the Name of Science'', his first book.

In the early 1950s, he moved to New York City and became a writer and designer at ''Humpty Dumpty'' magazine where for eight years he wrote features and stories for it and several other children's magazines. His paper-folding puzzles at that magazine (sister publication to ''Children's Digest'' at the time, and now sister publication to ''Jack and Jill'' magazine) led to his first work at ''Scientific American.''

For many decades, Gardner, his wife Charlotte, and their two sons lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, where he earned his living as an independent author, publishing books with several different publishers, and also publishing hundreds of magazine articles and newspaper articles in various magazines and newspapers. Either by choice or coincidence (given his interest in logic and mathematics), they lived on Euclid Avenue.

In 1979, Gardner and his wife semi-retired and moved to Hendersonville, North Carolina. His wife died in 2000. In 2002, he returned to Norman, Oklahoma, where his son, James Gardner, is a professor of education at the University of Oklahoma. He died there on May 22, 2010.

Views and interests

Recreational mathematics

Martin Gardner more or less single-handedly sustained and nurtured interest in recreational mathematics in the U.S. for a large part of the 20th century. He is best known for his decades-long efforts in popular mathematics and science journalism, particularly through his "Mathematical Games" column in ''Scientific American''.

Gardner had problems learning calculus and never took a mathematics course beyond high school. He was the editor of a children's magazine named ''Humpty Dumpty's Magazine for Little Children'' in 1956 when he was asked by the publisher of ''Scientific American'' about the possibility of starting a regular column about recreational mathematics, following his submission of an article about flexagons.

The "Mathematical Games" column ran from 1956 to 1981 and was the first introduction of many subjects to a wider audience, including:

Flexagons

John Horton Conway's Game of Life

Polyominoes

The Soma cube

The board game "Nash", also called "Hex" and sometimes called "John", independently created by Piet Hein and John Forbes Nash

Hare and Hounds

Tangrams

Penrose tiling

Cryptanalysis/public key cryptography/trapdoor ciphers/the RSA-129 cryptographic challenge

The work of M. C. Escher

Fractals.

Many of these articles have been collected in a series of books starting with ''Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions'', first published in 1956.

In 1981, on Gardner's retirement from ''Scientific American'', the column was replaced by Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas", a name that is an anagram of "Mathematical Games". Gardner never really retired as an author, but rather he continued to do literature research and to write, especially in updating many of his older books, such as ''Origami, Eleusis, and the Soma Cube'', ISBN 978-0-521-73524-7, published 2008.

Gardner also wrote a "puzzle" story column for ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' magazine for a while in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Pseudoscience

Gardner's uncompromising attitude toward pseudoscience made him one of the world's foremost anti-pseudoscience polemicists of the 20th century. His book ''Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science'' (1952, revised 1957) is a classic and seminal work of the skeptical movement. It explored myriad dubious outlooks and projects including Fletcherism, creationism, food faddism, Charles Fort, Rudolf Steiner, Scientology, Dianetics, UFOs, dowsing, extra-sensory perception, the Bates method, and psychokinesis. This book and his subsequent efforts (''Science: Good, Bad and Bogus'', 1981; ''Order and Surprise'', 1983, etc.) earned him a wealth of detractors and antagonists in the fields of "fringe science" and New Age philosophy, with many of whom he kept up running dialogs (both public and private) for decades.

In 1976, Gardner was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), and he wrote a column called "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" (originally "Notes of a Psi-Watcher") from 1983 to 2002 for that organization's periodical ''Skeptical Inquirer''. These have been collected in five books: ''New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher'' (1988), ''On the Wild Side'' (1992), ''Weird Water and Fuzzy Logic'' (1996), ''Did Adam and Eve Have Navels'' (2000), and ''Are Universes Thicker than Blackberries'' (2003). Gardner was a senior CSICOP fellow and prominent skeptic of the paranormal.

On August 21, 2010, Gardner was posthumously honored with an award recognizing his contributions in the skeptical field, from the Independent Investigations Group during its 10th Anniversary Gala.

Religion and philosophy

Gardner had an abiding fascination with religious belief. He was a fideistic deist, professing belief in God as Creator, but critical of organized religion. He has been quoted as saying that he regards parapsychology and other research into the paranormal as tantamount to "tempting God" and seeking "signs and wonders". He stated that while he would expect tests on the efficacy of prayers to be negative, he would not rule out a priori the possibility that as yet unknown paranormal forces may allow prayers to influence the physical world.

Gardner wrote repeatedly about what public figures such as Robert Maynard Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, and William F. Buckley, Jr. believed and whether their beliefs were logically consistent. In some cases, he attacked prominent religious figures such as Mary Baker Eddy on the grounds that their claims are unsupportable. His semi-autobiographical novel ''The Flight of Peter Fromm'' depicts a traditionally Protestant Christian man struggling with his faith, examining 20th century scholarship and intellectual movements and ultimately rejecting Christianity while remaining a theist. He described his own belief as philosophical theism inspired by the theology of the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. While critical of organized religions, Gardner believed in God, asserting that this belief cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by reason or science. At the same time, he was skeptical of claims that God has communicated with human beings through spoken or telepathic revelation or through miracles in the natural world.

Gardner's philosophy may be summarized as follows: There is nothing supernatural, and nothing in human reason or visible in the world to compel people to believe in God. The mystery of existence is enchanting, but a belief in "The Old One" comes from faith without evidence. However, with faith and prayer people can find greater happiness than without. If there is an afterlife, the loving "Old One" is probably real. "[To an atheist] the universe is the most exquisite masterpiece ever constructed by nobody", from G. K. Chesterton, was one of Gardner's favorite quotes.

Gardner has said that he suspects that the fundamental nature of human consciousness may not be knowable or discoverable, unless perhaps a physics more profound than ("underlying") quantum mechanics is some day developed. In this regard, he said, he was an adherent of the "New Mysterianism".

Literary criticism and fiction

Gardner was considered a leading authority on Lewis Carroll. His annotated version of ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' and ''Through the Looking Glass'', explaining the many mathematical riddles, wordplay, and literary references found in the Alice books, was first published as ''The Annotated Alice'' (Clarkson Potter, 1960), a sequel published with new annotations as ''More Annotated Alice'' (Random House, 1990), and finally as ''The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition'' (Norton, 1999) combining notes from the earlier editions and new material. The book arose when Gardner, who found the Alice books 'sort of frightening' when he was young but found them fascinating as an adult, felt that someone ought to annotate them and suggested to a publisher that Bertrand Russell be asked; when the publisher did not manage to get past Russell's secretary, Gardner was asked to take the project. The book has been Gardner's most successful, selling over half a million copies.

In addition to the 'Alice' books, Gardner produced “Annotated” editions of Chesterton’s ''The Innocence Of Father Brown'' and ''The Man Who Was Thursday'' as well as of celebrated poems including ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'', ''Casey at the Bat'', ''The Night Before Christmas'', and ''The Hunting of the Snark''; the last also written by Lewis Carroll.

Gardner occasionally tried his hand at fiction of a kind always closely associated with his non-fictional preoccupations. His ''roman à clef'' novel was ''The Flight of Peter Fromm'' (1973) and his short stories were collected in ''The No-Sided Professor and Other Tales of Fantasy, Humor, Mystery, and Philosophy'' (1987). Gardner published stories about an imaginary numerologist named Dr. Matrix and ''Visitors from Oz'' (1998), based on L. Frank Baum's Oz books, which reflected his love of Oz. (He was a founding member of the International Wizard of Oz Club, and winner of its 1971 L. Frank Baum Memorial Award.) Gardner was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club, the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers.

Gatherings for Gardner

Gardner was famously shy and declined many honors when he learned that a public appearance would be required if he accepted. However, in 1993 Atlanta puzzle collector Tom Rodgers convinced Gardner to attend an evening devoted to Gardner's puzzle-solving efforts. The gathering was repeated in 1996, again with Gardner in attendance, which convinced Rodgers and his friends to make the gathering a regular event. It has been held since then in even-numbered years near Atlanta, and the program consists of any topic which could have been touched by Gardner during his writing career. The event is called "Gathering for Gardner", and is written "G4G''n''", with ''n'' being replaced by the number of the event (the 2010 event thus was ''G4G9''). Gardner only attended the 1993 and 1996 events.

Controversy

In addition to writing about mathematics, Gardner was an avid controversialist on contemporary issues, arguing for his points of view in a wide range of fields, from general semantics to fuzzy logic to watching TV (he once wrote a negative review of Jerry Mander's book ''Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television''). His philosophical views are described and defended in his book ''The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener.'' Under the pseudonym "George Groth", Gardner panned his own book for the ''New York Review of Books''. Although Gardner was a fierce critic of paranormal claims, under his "George Groth" pseudonym he wrote an article for ''Fate'' magazine (October 1952, pp. 39–43) titled "He Writes with Your Hand," which touted the psychic abilities of mentalist Stanley Jaks as genuine.

Gardner was known for his sometimes controversial philosophy of mathematics. He wrote negative reviews of ''The Mathematical Experience'' by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh and ''What is mathematics, really?'' by Hersh, each of which were critical of aspects of mathematical Platonism, and the first of which was well-received by the mathematical community. While Gardner was often perceived as a hard-core Platonist, his reviews demonstrated some formalist tendencies. Gardner maintained that his views are widespread among mathematicians, but Hersh has countered that in his experience as a professional mathematician and speaker, this is not the case.

Works

Books

1949 ''Over the Coffee Cups.'' Tulsa: Montandon Magic. A book of close-up magic, described by Gardner as "dinner-table tricks and gags."

1952 ''In the Name of Science: An Entertaining Survey of the High Priests and Cultists of Science, Past and Present'' G. P. Putnam's Sons

1957 ''Science Puzzlers'' The Viking Press, Scholastic Book Services

1957 ''Great Essays in Science'' (editor); Prometheus Books (Reprint edition 1994) ISBN 0-87975-853-8

1957 ''The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was''. (with Russel B. Nye) Michigan State University Press. Revised 1994.

1958 ''Logic Machines and Diagrams''. McGraw-Hill New York

1960 ''The Annotated Alice'' New York: Bramhall House Clarkson Potter. Lib of Congress #60-7341 (no ISBN)

1962 ''The Annotated Snark'' New York: Simon & Schuster. (Unabridged ''Hunting of the snark'' with introduction and ''extensive'' notes from Gardner). 1998 reprint, Penguin Classics; ISBN 0-14-043491-7

1962 ''Relativity for the Million'' New York: MacMillan Company (o.p.). Revised and updated 1976 as ''The Relativity Explosion'' New York: Vintage Books. Revised and enlarged 1996 as ''Relativity Simply Explained'' New York: Dover; ISBN 0-486-29315-7

1964 ''The Ambidextrous Universe: Mirror Asymmetry and Time-Reversed Worlds'' (Revised ed., 1990 as ''The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings''; 3rd ed., 2005, Dover; ISBN 0-486-44244-6)

1965 ''The Annotated Ancient Mariner'' New York: Clarkson Potter, Reprint. Prometheus. ISBN 1-59102-125-1

1967 ''Annotated Casey at the Bat: A Collection of Ballads about the Mighty Casey'' New York: Clarkson Potter. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN 0-226-28263-5 Reprint. New York: Dover, 1995. ISBN 0-486-28598-7

1973 ''The Flight of Peter Fromm'', Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc. Prometheus Books; Reprint edition (1994) ISBN 0-87975-911-9

1976 ''The Incredible Dr. Matrix'', New York, Charles Scribner's Sons; ISBN 0-684-14669-X

1978 ''Aha! Insight'', W.H. Freeman & Company; ISBN 0-7167-1017-X

1981 ''Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 0-87975-573-3 (paperback), ISBN 0-87975-144-4 (hardback), ISBN 0-380-61754-4 (Avon pocket paperback)

1981 ''Entertaining Science Experiments With Everyday Objects''; Dover; ISBN 0-486-24201-3

1982 ''Aha! Gotcha: Paradoxes to Puzzle and Delight'' (Tools for Transformation); W.H. Freeman & Company; ISBN 0-7167-1361-6

1983 ''The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener'', 1999 reprint St. Martin's Griffin; ISBN 0-312-20682-8

1983 ''Order and Surprise'', Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-879-75219-X

1984 ''Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing (Test Your Code Breaking Skills)'', Dover; ISBN 0-486-24761-9

1985 ''Magic Numbers of Dr Matrix'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 0-87975-282-3

1986 ''Entertaining Mathematical Puzzles'', Dover; ISBN 0-486-25211-6

1987 ''The No-Sided Professor and other tales of fantasy, humor, mystery, and philosophy'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 0-87975-390-0

1987 ''The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown'' Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-217748-6 (Notes by Gardner, on G. K. Chesterton’s stories).

1987 ''Riddles of the Sphinx'' Mathematical Association of American, ISBN 0-88385-632-8 (collection of articles from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine)

1987 ''Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments'', W.H. Freeman & Company; ISBN 0-7167-1925-8

1988 ''Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers'', Dover; ISBN 0-486-25637-5

1988 ''New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 0-87975-432-X (collection of "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" columns)

1990 ''More Annotated Alice'', Random House; ISBN 0-394-58571-2 (a "supplement" to ''The Annotated Alice'')

1991 ''The Unexpected Hanging and Other Mathematical Diversions'', University Of Chicago Press; Reprint edition; ISBN 0-226-28256-2

1991 ''The Annotated Night Before Christmas: A Collection Of Sequels, Parodies, And Imitations Of Clement Moore's Immortal Ballad About Santa Claus Edited, with an introduction and notes, by Martin Gardner'', Summit Books (Reprinted, Prometheus Books, 1995); ISBN 0-671-70839-2

1991 ''Fractal Music, Hypercards and More''; W. H. Freeman

1992 ''On the Wild Side'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 0-87975-713-2 (collection of "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" columns)

1993 ''The Healing Revelations of Mary Baker Eddy'', Prometheus Books,

1994 ''My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles'', Dover; ISBN 0-486-28152-3

1995 ''Classic Brainteasers'', Sterling Publishing; ISBN 0-8069-1261-8

1995 ''Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 0-87975-955-0

1996 ''The Universe in a Handkerchief: Lewis Carroll's Mathematical Recreations, Games, Puzzles, and Word Plays'', Springer-Verlag

1996 ''Weird Water & Fuzzy Logic: More Notes of a Fringe Watcher'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 1-57392-096-7 (collection of "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" columns)

1997 ''The Night Is Large : Collected Essays, 1938-1995'', St. Martin's Griffin; ISBN 0-312-16949-3

1998 ''Calculus Made Easy'', St. Martin's Press; Revised edition ISBN 0-312-18548-0 (Revisions and additions to the 1910 calculus textbook by Silvanus P. Thompson.)

1998 ''Martin Gardner's Table Magic'', Dover; ISBN 0-486-40403-X

1998 ''Mathematical Recreations: A Collection in Honor of Martin Gardner'', Dover; ISBN 0486400891

1998 ''Visitors From Oz'' St. Martin's Press; ISBN 0-312-19353-X

1999 ''Gardner's Whys & Wherefores'' Prometheus Books; ISBN 1-57392-744-9

1999 ''The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition'' ; W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN 0-393-04847-0

1999 ''The Annotated Thursday: G. K. Chesterton's Masterpiece, the Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton'', Edited by Martin Gardner.

2000 ''From the Wandering Jew to William F. Buckley, Jr. : On Science, Literature, and Religion'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 1-57392-852-6

2000 ''The Annotated Wizard of Oz'', New York: W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN 0-393-04992-2 (introduction)

2001 ''A Gardner's Workout: Training the Mind and Entertaining the Spirit'' ISBN 1-56881-120-9

2001 ''Mathematical Puzzle Tales''; Mathematical Association of America ISBN 0-88385-533-X (collection of articles from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine)

2001 ''Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience'', W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN 0-393-32238-6 (collection of "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" columns)

2002 ''Martin Gardner's Favorite Poetic Parodies'' Prometheus Books; ISBN 1-57392-925-5

2003 ''Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?: Discourses on Gödel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics'', ISBN 0-393-05742-9 (collection of "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" columns and others. The title alludes to Charles Sanders Peirce's ridiculing of Laplace's "principle of insufficient reason", which suggested uniform prior probability for Bayesian statistics.)

2004 ''Smart Science Tricks'', Sterling; ISBN 1-4027-0910-2

2007 ''The Jinn from Hyperspace: And Other Scribblings—both Serious and Whimsical'', Prometheus Books; ISBN 1-5910-2565-6

2008 ''Bamboozlers: The Book of Bankable Bar Betchas, Brain Bogglers, Belly Busters & Bewitchery by Diamond Jim Tyler'', Diamond Jim Productions; ISBN 0-967-60181-9 (introduction)

2009 ''When You Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish and other Speculations about This and That'', Hill and Wang; ISBN 0-8090-8737-2

2009 ''The Upside-Down World of Gustave Verbeek'', Sunday Press Books; ISBN 0-9768885-7-2 (introduction)

(For a downloadable version of ''The Mathemagician and the Pied Puzzler'', another tribute book, see external links below)

Note: Gardner has a number of books on magic written "for the trade", which are not listed here.

Collected ''Scientific American'' columns

Fifteen books altogether—what Don Knuth calls "the Canon"—encompass Gardner's columns from ''Scientific American'':

''Hexaflexagons and Other Mathematical Diversions: The First Scientific American Book of Puzzles and Games'' 1959; University of Chicago Press 1988 ISBN 0-226-28254-6 (originally published as ''The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions'')

''The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions'' 1961; University of Chicago Press 1987; ISBN 0-226-28253-8

''Martin Gardner's New Mathematical Diversions from Scientific American'' 1966; Simon and Schuster; reprinted by Mathematical Association of America 1995

''Numerology of Dr. Matrix'' 1967; reprinted/expanded as ''The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix''; Prometheus Books; ISBN 0-87975-281-5 / ISBN 0-87975-282-3

''Unexpected Hangings, and Other Mathematical Diversions'' Simon & Schuster 1968; reprinted by University of Chicago Press, 1991 ISBN 0-671-20073-9

''The Sixth Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions'' Simon & Schuster 1971

''Mathematical Carnival'' Vintage 1975; reprinted by Mathematical Association of America

''Mathematical Magic Show'' Vintage 1977; reprinted by Mathematical Association of America

''Mathematical Circus'' Vintage 1979; reprinted by Mathematical Association of America

''Wheels, Life, and Other Mathematical Amusements'' 1983; W. H. Freeman & Co. ISBN 0-7167-1589-9

''Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments'' 1986; W. H. Freeman & Co. ISBN 0-7167-1799-9

''Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments'' 1988; W. H. Freeman & Co. ISBN 0-7167-1925-8

''Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers'' 1989; W. H. Freeman & Co. ISBN 0-7167-1987-8; reprinted by Mathematical Association of America

''Fractal Music, Hypercards and More'' 1991; W. H. Freeman

''Last Recreations: Hydras, Eggs, and other Mathematical Mystifications'' 1997; Springer Verlag; ISBN 0-387-94929-1

Three other books collect some or all of Gardner's columns from ''Scientific American'':

''The Colossal Book of Mathematics: Classic Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problems'' 2001; W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN 0-393-02023-1 (a "best of" collection)

''Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games'' 2005; Mathematical Association of America; ISBN 0-88385-545-3 (CD-ROM of all fifteen books above, encompassing all articles in the column)

''The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems'' 2006; W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN 0-393-06114-0

See also

Bulgarian solitaire

Hollow Earth

Heegner number

Russell's paradox

Three Prisoners problem

Newcomb's paradox

References

External links

Interviews

1979 interview with Gardner by Anthony Barcellos for the College Mathematics Journal

1998 interview with Gardner by Kendrick Frazier for the Skeptical Inquirer

2004 interview with Gardner (PDF) by Allyn Jackson for the AMS ''Notices''

The Martin Gardner Interview (2005) - Cambridge University Press blog - Part 1

2006 interview with Gardner by Colm Mulcahy for the MAA Online website

Tributes

James Randi's notes on Gardner, written in the 1960s

A short Martin Gardner Bio

About Gathering for Gardner

(2587) Gardner asteroid

On-line Gardner bibliography

Gathering for Gardner conference site, G4G, includes downloadable Gardner tribute e-book (The Mathemagician and Pied Puzzler)

Tribute at ''Scientific American''

Obituaries

Martin Gardner, Puzzler and Polymath, Dies at 95, New York Times, 23 May 2010

A tribute to Martin Gardner, London Times, 24 May 2010

Martin Gardner, 95, a journalist, provided in-depth analysis of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat, Washington Post obituary, 24 May 2010

''Martin Gardner 1914 to 2010'' by John Helvin in Mystery Magazine (June 2010)

Category:1914 births Category:2010 deaths Category:People from Tulsa, Oklahoma Category:20th-century mathematicians Category:21st-century mathematicians Category:American literary critics Category:American magicians Category:American mathematicians Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American science writers Category:American skeptics Category:Combinatorial game theorists Category:Cellular automatists Category:Mathematics writers Category:People from Norman, Oklahoma Category:Professional magicians Category:Puzzle designers Category:Recreational cryptographers Category:RSA Factoring Challenge Category:Scientific American people Category:Science journalists Category:United States Navy sailors Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:Writers from Oklahoma Category:Writers from New York Category:Real people associated with Alice in Wonderland Category:Real people associated with Oz Category:Pseudonymous writers

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Scott Kim is an American puzzle and computer game designer, artist, and author. He started writing an occasional "Boggler" column for ''Discover'' magazine in 1990, and became an exclusive columnist in 1999, and created hundreds of other puzzles for magazines such as ''Scientific American'' and ''Games'', as well as thousands of puzzles for computer games. He was the holder of the Harold Keables chair at Iolani School in 2008.

Kim was born in 1955 in Washington D.C. and grew up in Rolling Hills Estates, California. He had an early interest in mathematics, education, and art, and attended Stanford University, receiving a BA in music, and a PhD in Computers and Graphic Design under Donald Knuth. In 1981, he created a book called ''Inversions'', words that can be read in more than one way. His first puzzles appeared in ''Scientific American'' in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column.

Kim is one of the best-known masters of the art of ambigrams. Isaac Asimov called Kim "the Escher of the alphabet".

Kim is a regular speaker on puzzle design, such as at the International Game Developers Conference and Casual Games Conference. His wife, Amy Jo Kim, is the author of ''Community Building on the Web''.

He lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife Amy Jo Kim, son Gabriel and daughter Lila Rose, and his two cats Sam and Viola.

Works

''Inversions'', 1981, Byte Books, ISBN 1-55953-280-7, a book of 60 original ambigrams

"Letterforms & Illusion", 1989, W. H. Freeman & Co., created with Robin Samelson, accompanies the book, ''Inversions''.

''Heaven and Earth'', Buena Vista / Disney (computer game)

''Obsidian'', SegaSoft (computer game)

''MetaSquares'', 1996 (computer game, created with Kai Krause, Phil Clevenger, and Ian Gilman).

''The Next Tetris'', Hasbro Interactive, PlayStation

''Railroad Rush Hour'', ThinkFun (toy)

''Charlie Blast's Territory'' (Nintendo 64 game)

''The NewMedia Puzzle Workout'' - collection of Kim's magazine puzzles

''Scott Kim's Puzzle Box'' (monthly Shockwave puzzles at JuniorNet.com)

''Brainteasers, Mind Benders, Games, Word Searches, Puzzlers, Mazes & More Calendar 2007'', Workman Publishing Company, ISBN 0-7611-4079-4

Contributed works

Harry Abrams. ''Escher Interactive'' (computer game)

Elonka Dunin, ''The Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles'', 2006, Constable & Robinson, ISBN 0-78671-726-2

References

Neurology Now. Biographical article from 2009.

Scott Kim: Puzzlemaster - Kim's website

Dan Burstein, ''Secrets of Angels & Demons'', 2004, CDS Books. ISBN 1-59315-140-3

''Discover'' magazine "Boggler" column. (archived copies, 1999-2002)

Susan Lammers, ''Programmers at Work'' (Microsoft Press, 1986), 272-285. Interview with Kim.

TED Talks video - at the Entertainment Gathering Conference 2008

Category:1955 births Category:American artists Category:American writers Category:American writers of Korean descent Category:American video game designers

Category:Living people Category:Puzzle designers Category:Toy inventors Category:Stanford University alumni

The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950. Five of Marx Brothers’ thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy films, with two of them (''Duck Soup'' and ''A Night at the Opera'') in the top twelve.

The core of the act was the three elder brothers, Chico, Harpo and Groucho; each developed a highly distinctive stage persona. The two younger brothers, Gummo and Zeppo, did not develop their stage characters to the same extent, and eventually left the act to pursue other careers. Gummo was not in any of the movies; Zeppo appeared only in the first five.

Early life

Born in New York City, the Marx Brothers were the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany and France. Their mother, Minnie Schönberg, was from Dornum in East Frisia; and their father, Simon Marx (whose name was changed to Samuel Marx, and who was nicknamed "Frenchy") was a native of Alsace and worked as a tailor. The family lived in the then-poor Yorkville section of New York City's Upper East Side, between the Irish, German and Italian quarters.

Brothers

The brothers were:

Stage name	Actual name	Born	Died	Age
	Leonard	March 22, 1887	October 11, 1961	74
	Adolph (after 1911: Arthur)	November 23, 1888	September 28, 1964	75
	Julius Henry	October 2, 1890	August 19, 1977	86
	Milton	October 23, 1892	April 21, 1977	84
	Herbert	February 25, 1901	November 30, 1979	78

A sixth brother, Manfred ("Mannie"), was actually the first child of Samuel and Minnie, born in 1886, though an online family tree states that he was born in 1885: "Family lore told privately of the firstborn son, Manny, born in 1886 but surviving for only three months, and carried off by tuberculosis. Even some members of the Marx family wondered if he was pure myth. But Manfred can be verified. A death certificate of the Borough of Manhattan reveals that he died, aged seven months, on 17 July 1886, of 'entero-colitis,' with 'asthenia' contributing, i.e. probably a victim of influenza. He is buried at New York's Washington Cemetery, beside his grandmother, Fanny Sophie Schönberg (née Salomons), who died on 10 April 1901."

Stage beginnings

The brothers were from a family of artists, and their musical talent was encouraged from an early age. Harpo was amazingly talented, learning to play an estimated six different instruments throughout his career. He became a dedicated harpist, which gave him his nickname. Chico was an excellent pianist, Groucho a guitarist and singer, and Zeppo a vocalist. They got their start in vaudeville, where their uncle Albert Schönberg performed as Al Shean of Gallagher and Shean. Groucho's debut was in 1905, mainly as a singer. By 1907, he and Gummo were singing together as "The Three Nightingales" with Mabel O'Donnell. The next year, Harpo became the fourth Nightingale and by 1910, the group was expanded to include their mother Minnie and their Aunt Hannah. The troupe was renamed "The Six Mascots". A cousin of the Marx brothers was Mary Livingstone (b. Sadye Marks 1905-1983), who married comedian Jack Benny.

Comedy

One evening in 1912, a performance at the Opera House in Nacogdoches, Texas was interrupted by shouts from outside about a runaway mule. The audience hurried outside to see what was happening. When they returned, Groucho, angered by the interruption, made snide comments about the audience, including "Nacogdoches is full of roaches" and "The jackass is the flower of Tex-ass". Instead of becoming angry, the audience laughed. The family then realized they had potential as a comic troupe. However, in Harpo Marx's autobiography, ''Harpo Speaks'', he states that the runaway mule incident occurred in Ada, Oklahoma.

The act slowly evolved from singing with comedy to comedy with music. Their sketch "Fun in Hi Skule" featured Groucho as a German-accented teacher presiding over a classroom that included students Harpo, Gummo and Chico. The last version of the school act, titled ''Home Again'', was written by their uncle, Al Shean, of the famous vaudeville act Gallagher and Shean. At about this time, Gummo left to serve in World War I, reasoning that "anything is better than being an actor!" Zeppo replaced him in their final vaudeville years and in the jump to Broadway, and then to Paramount films.

During World War I, anti-German sentiments were common, and the family tried to conceal their German origin. After learning that farmers were excluded from the draft rolls, mother Minnie purchased a poultry farm near Countryside, Illinois, but the brothers soon found that chicken ranching was not in their blood. During this time, Groucho discontinued his "German" stage personality.

By this time, "The Four Marx Brothers" had begun to incorporate their unique style of comedy into their act and to develop their characters. Both Groucho and Harpo's memoirs say their now famous on-stage personae were created by Al Shean. Groucho began to wear his trademark greasepaint moustache and to use a stooped walk. Harpo stopped speaking onstage and began to wear a red fright wig and carry a taxi-cab horn. Chico spoke with a fake Italian accent, developed off-stage to deal with neighborhood toughs, while Zeppo adopted the role of the romantic (and "peerlessly cheesy", according to James Agee) straight man.

The on-stage personalities of Groucho, Chico and Harpo were said to have been based on their actual traits. Zeppo, on the other hand, was considered the funniest brother offstage, despite his straight stage roles. As the youngest, and having grown up watching his brothers, he could fill in for and imitate any of the others when illness kept them from performing. "He was so good as Captain Spaulding [in ''Animal Crackers''] that I would have let him play the part indefinitely, if they had allowed me to smoke in the audience", Groucho recalled. (Zeppo did impersonate Groucho in the film version of ''Animal Crackers''. Groucho was unavailable to film the scene in which the Beaugard painting is stolen, so the script was contrived to include a power failure which allowed Zeppo to play the Spaulding part in near-darkness.)

By the 1920s, the Marx Brothers had become one of America's favorite theatrical acts. With their sharp and bizarre sense of humor, they satirized high society and human hypocrisy. They also became famous for their improvisational comedy in free-form scenarios. A famous early instance was when Harpo arranged to chase a fleeing chorus girl across the stage during the middle of a Groucho monologue to see if Groucho would be thrown off. However, to the audience's delight, Groucho merely reacted by calmly checking his watch and commenting, "First time I ever saw a taxi hail a passenger". When Harpo chased the girl back the other direction, Groucho ad-libbed, "The 9:20's right on time. You can set your watch by the Lehigh Valley."

Under Chico's management, and with Groucho's creative direction, the brothers' vaudeville act had led to them becoming stars on Broadway, first with a musical revue, ''I'll Say She Is'' (1924–1925) and then with two musical comedies, ''The Cocoanuts'' (1925–1926) and ''Animal Crackers'' (1928–1929). Playwright George S. Kaufman worked on the last two and helped sharpen the Brothers' characterizations.

Out of their distinctive costumes the brothers looked alike, even down to their receding hairlines. Zeppo could pass for a younger Groucho, and played the role of his son in ''Horse Feathers''. A scene in ''Duck Soup'' finds Groucho, Harpo and Chico all appearing in the famous greasepaint eyebrows, mustache and round glasses, while wearing nightcaps. The three are indistinguishable, enabling them to carry off the "mirror scene" perfectly.

Origin of the stage names

The stage names for four of the five brothers were coined by monologist Art Fisher during a poker game in Galesburg, Illinois, based both on the brothers' personalities and Gus Mager's ''Sherlocko the Monk'', a popular comic strip of the day which included a supporting character named "Groucho the Monk". The reasons behind Chico's and Harpo's stage names are undisputed, and Gummo's is fairly well established. Groucho's and Zeppo's are far less clear. Arthur was named Harpo because he played the harp, and Leonard became Chico (pronounced "Chick-o") because of his tendency to chase women ("chicks", as a slang term for women. "In England now, they were called birds").

In his autobiography, Harpo explains that Milton became Gummo because he crept about the theater like a gumshoe detective. Other sources report that Gummo was the family's hypochondriac, having been the sickliest of the brothers in childhood, and therefore wore rubber overshoes, also called gumshoes, in all kinds of weather. Groucho stated that the source of the name was Gummo wearing galoshes. Either way, the name relates to rubber-soled shoes.

The reason Julius was named Groucho is perhaps the most disputed. There are three explanations:

Julius' temperament: Maxine, Chico's daughter and Groucho's niece, said in the documentary ''The Unknown Marx Brothers'' that Julius was named "Groucho" simply because he was grouchy most or all of the time. Robert B. Weide, a director known for his knowledge of Marx Brothers history, said in ''Remarks On Marx,'' a documentary short included with the DVD of ''A Night at the Opera,'' that among the competing explanations he found this one the most believable. Steve Allen, in ''Funny People'', said that the name made no sense; Groucho might have been impudent and impertinent, but not grouchy — at least not around Allen. However, at the very end of his life, Groucho finally admitted that Fisher had named him Groucho because he was the "moody one".

The grouch bag: This explanation appears in Harpo's biography, was voiced by Chico in a TV appearance included on ''The Unknown Marx Brothers,'' and was also offered by George Fenneman, Groucho's sidekick on his TV game show, ''You Bet Your Life.'' A grouch bag was a small drawstring bag worn around the neck in which a traveler could keep money and other valuables so that it would be very difficult for anyone to steal them. Most of Groucho's friends and associates stated that Groucho was extremely stingy, especially after losing all his money in the 1929 stock market crash, so naming him for the grouch bag may have been a comment on this trait. Groucho, in chapter six of his first autobiography, insisted that this was not the case:

I kept my money in a 'grouch bag.' This was a small chamois bag that actors used to wear around their neck to keep other hungry actors from pinching their dough. Naturally, you're going to think that's where I got my name from. But that's not so. Grouch bags were worn on manly chests long before there was a Groucho.

Groucho's explanation: Groucho himself insisted that he was named for a character in the comic strip, ''Knocko the Monk'', which inspired the craze for nicknames ending in "o"; in fact, there was a character in that strip named "Groucho the Monk". However, he is the ''only'' Marx or Marx associate who defended this theory, and as he is not an unbiased witness, few biographers take the claim seriously.

:Groucho himself was no help on this point; during his Carnegie Hall concert, when he was discussing the Brothers' names and when it came to his own, he said, "My name, of course, I never did understand." He goes on to mention the possibility that he was named after his unemployed uncle, Julius, who lived with his family. The family believed he was actually a rich uncle hiding a fortune. Groucho claims that he may have been named after him (perhaps by the family trying to get into the will). "And he finally died, and he left us his will, and in that will he left three razor blades, an 8-ball, a celluloid dicky, and he owed my father $85 beside."

Herbert was not nicknamed by Art Fisher, since he did not join the act until Gummo had departed. As with Groucho, three explanations exist for Herbert's name, "Zeppo":

Harpo's explanation: Harpo said in ''Harpo Speaks!'' the brothers had named Herbert for Mr. Zippo, a chimpanzee that was part of another performer's act. Herbert found the nickname very unflattering, and when it came time for him to join the act, he put his foot down and refused to be called "Zippo." The brothers compromised on ''Zeppo.''

Chico's explanation: Chico never wrote an autobiography, and gave fewer interviews than his brothers, but his daughter, Maxine, in ''The Unknown Marx Brothers'' said that when the Marx Brothers lived in Chicago, a popular style of humor was the "Zeke and Zeb" joke, which made fun of slow-witted Midwesterners in much the same way Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes mock Cajuns and Ole and Lena jokes mock Minnesotans. One day, as Chico returned home, he found Herbert sitting on the fence. Herbert greeted him by saying "Hi, Zeke!" Chico responded with "Hi, Zeb!" and the name stuck. The brothers thereafter called him "Zeb," and when he joined the act, they floated the idea of "Zebbo," eventually preferring "Zeppo."

Groucho's explanation: In a tape-recorded interview excerpted on ''The Unknown Marx Brothers,'' Groucho said Zeppo was so named because he was born when the first zeppelins started crossing the ocean. He also stated this in his Carnegie Hall concert, ca. 1972. The first zeppelin flew in July 1900, and Herbert was born seven months later in February 1901. However, the first transatlantic zeppelin flight was not until 1924, long after Herbert's birth.

Maxine Marx reported in ''The Unknown Marx Brothers'' that the brothers listed their ''real'' names (Julius, Leonard, Adolph, Milton and Herbert) on playbills and in programs, and only used the nicknames behind the scenes, until Alexander Woollcott overheard them calling one another by the nicknames; he asked them why they used their own ordinary real names publicly when they had such wonderful nicknames. They replied, "That wouldn't be dignified." Woollcott answered with a belly laugh. Since Woollcott did not meet the Marx Brothers until the premiere of ''I'll Say She Is,'' which was their first Broadway show, this would mean they used their real names throughout their vaudeville days, and that the name "Gummo" never appeared in print during his time in the act. Other sources report that the Marx Brothers did go by their nicknames during their vaudeville era, but briefly listed themselves by their given names when ''I'll Say She Is'' opened because they were worried that a Broadway audience would reject a vaudeville act if they were perceived as low class.

Hollywood

Paramount

thumb|Top to bottom: Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Zeppo (1931).The Marx Brothers' stage shows became popular just as Hollywood was changing to "talkies". They signed a contract with Paramount and embarked on their film career. Their first two released films (they had previously made — but not released — one short silent film titled ''Humor Risk'') were adaptations of Broadway shows: ''The Cocoanuts'' (1929) and ''Animal Crackers'' (1930). Both were written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. Following these two feature-length films, they made a short film that was included in Paramount's twentieth anniversary documentary, ''The House That Shadows Built'' (1931), in which they adapted a scene from ''I'll Say She Is''. Their third feature-length film, ''Monkey Business'' (1931), was their first that was not based on a stage production, and the only movie in which Harpo's voice is heard (he sings tenor from inside a barrel in the opening scene). ''Horse Feathers'' (1932), in which the brothers satirized the American college system and Prohibition, was their most popular film yet, and won them the cover of ''Time''. It included a running gag from their stage work, where Harpo revealed having nearly everything in his coat. At various points in ''Horse Feathers'' Harpo pulls out of his coat: a wooden mallet, a fish, a coiled rope, a tie, a poster of a woman in her underwear, a cup of hot coffee, a sword; and, just after Groucho warns him that he "can't burn the candle at both ends," a candle burning at both ends. In another famous sketch, shown in ''Animal Crackers'', Harpo drops a full banquet's worth of pilfered silverware out of his sleeve, followed by a coffeepot.

During this time, Chico and Groucho Marx starred in a radio comedy series, ''Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel''. Although the series was short lived, much of the story material developed for it was used for subsequent films starring the Brothers. Furthermore, the scripts and recordings were believed lost for decades until copies of the scripts were found in the 1980s in the Library of Congress and both published in a book and performed with Marx Brother impersonators for BBC Radio.

Their last Paramount film, ''Duck Soup'' (1933) — directed by the most highly regarded director they ever worked with, Leo McCarey — is the higher rated of two Marx Brothers films to make the American Film Institute's "100 years ... 100 Movies" list (the other film being ''A Night at the Opera''). It did not do as well as ''Horse Feathers'', but was the sixth-highest grosser of 1933. The film also led to a feud between the Marxes and the village of Fredonia, New York. Freedonia, of course, was the name of the fictional country in ''Duck Soup'', and the city fathers wrote to Paramount and asked the studio to remove all references in the film to Freedonia because "it is hurting our town's image". Groucho fired back a sarcastic reply asking them to change the name of their town because "it's hurting our picture".

The Marx Brothers left Paramount because of disagreements over creative decisions and financial issues.

MGM, RKO, and United Artists

Zeppo left the act to become an agent and went on to build with his brother Gummo one of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood, helping the likes of Jack Benny and Lana Turner get their starts. Groucho and Chico did radio, and there was talk of returning to Broadway. At a bridge game with Chico, Irving Thalberg began discussing the possibility of the Marxes coming to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and they signed, now known as "The Three Marx Brothers," or simply "The Marx Bros."

Unlike the free-for-all scripts at Paramount, Thalberg insisted on a strong story structure, making them into more sympathetic characters, interweaving their comedy with romantic plots and non-comic musical numbers, while the targets of their mischief were largely confined to clear villains. Thalberg was adamant that these scripts had to include a "low point" where all seems lost for both the Marxes and the romantic leads. In a June 13, 1969, interview with Dick Cavett, Groucho said that the two movies made with Thalberg (''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races'') were the best that they ever produced.

Another idea of Thalberg's was that before filming would commence on an upcoming picture, the Marx Brothers would try out its material on the vaudeville stage, working on comic timing and learning what earned a laugh and what did not.

The first film that the brothers shot with Thalberg was ''A Night at the Opera'' (1935), a satire on the world of opera, where the brothers help two young singers in love by throwing a production of ''Il Trovatore'' into chaos. The film (which includes a scene where they cram an absurd number of people into a tiny stateroom on a ship) was a great success, and was followed two years later by the even bigger hit ''A Day at the Races'' (1937), where the brothers cause mayhem in a sanitarium and at a horse race (this sequence includes Groucho and Chico's famous "Tootsie Frootsie Ice Cream" sketch). However, during shooting in 1936, Thalberg died suddenly, and without him, the brothers did not have an advocate at MGM.

After a short experience at RKO (''Room Service'', 1938), the Marx Brothers made three more films before leaving MGM, ''At the Circus'' (1939), ''Go West'' (1940) and ''The Big Store'' (1941). Prior to the release of ''The Big Store'', the team announced their retirement from the screen, but Chico was in dire financial straits; to help settle his gambling debts, the Marx Brothers made another two films together, ''A Night in Casablanca'' (1946) and ''Love Happy'' (1949), both of them released by United Artists.

Later years

From the 1940s onward, Chico and Harpo appeared separately and together in nightclubs and casinos. Chico also fronted a big band, the Chico Marx Orchestra (with 17-year-old Mel Tormé as a vocalist). Groucho began his solo career with ''You Bet Your Life'', which ran from 1947 to 1961 on NBC radio and television. He also authored several books, including ''Groucho and Me'' (1959), ''Memoirs of a Mangy Lover'' (1964) and ''The Groucho Letters'' (1967).

Groucho and Chico briefly appeared together in a 1957 short film promoting the Saturday Evening Post entitled "Showdown at Ulcer Gulch," directed by animator Shamus Culhane, Chico's son-in-law. Groucho, Chico, and Harpo worked together (in separate scenes) in ''The Story of Mankind'' (1957). In 1959, the three began production of ''Deputy Seraph,'' a TV series starring Harpo and Chico as blundering angels, and Groucho (in every third episode) as their boss, the "Deputy Seraph." The project was abandoned when Chico was found to be uninsurable (and incapable of memorizing his lines) due to severe arteriosclerosis. On March 8 of that year, Chico and Harpo starred as bumbling thieves in ''The Incredible Jewel Robbery'', a half-hour pantomimed episode of the ''General Electric Theater'' on CBS. Groucho made a cameo appearance—uncredited, because of constraints in his NBC contract—in the last scene, and delivered the only line of dialog ("We won't talk until we see our lawyer!").

According to a September 1947 article in ''Newsweek'', Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo all signed to appear as themselves in a biopic entitled ''The Life and Times of the Marx Brothers''. In addition to being a non-fiction biography of the Marxes, the film would have also featured the brothers reenacting much of their previously unfilmed material from both their vaudeville and Broadway eras. The film, had it been made, would have been the first performance by the Brothers as a quartet since 1933.

The five brothers made only one television appearance together, in 1957, on an early incarnation of ''The Tonight Show'' called ''Tonight! America After Dark'', hosted by Jack Lescoulie. Five years later (October 1, 1962) after Jack Paar's tenure, Groucho made a guest appearance to introduce the ''Tonight Show's'' new host, Johnny Carson.

Around 1960, the acclaimed director Billy Wilder considered writing and directing a new Marx Brothers film. Tentatively titled "A Day at the U.N.," it was to be a comedy of international intrigue set around the United Nations building in New York. Wilder had discussions with Groucho and Gummo, but the project was put on hold because of Harpo's ill-health and abandoned when Chico died in 1961.

In 1970, the four Marx Brothers had a brief reunion (of sorts) in the animated ABC television special ''The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians'', produced by Rankin-Bass animation (of ''Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' fame). The special featured animated reworkings of various famous comedians' acts, including W. C. Fields, Jack Benny, George Burns, Henny Youngman, The Smothers Brothers, Flip Wilson, Phyllis Diller, Jack E. Leonard, George Jessel and the Marx Brothers. Most of the comedians provided their own voices for their animated counterparts, except for Fields and Chico Marx (both had died), and Zeppo Marx (who had left show business in 1933). Voice actor Paul Frees filled in for all three (no voice was needed for Harpo, who was also deceased). The Marx Brothers' segment was a reworking of a scene from their Broadway play ''I'll Say She Is'', a parody of Napoleon which Groucho considered among the Brothers' funniest routines. The sketch featured animated representations, if not the voices, of all four brothers. Romeo Muller is credited as having written special material for the show, but the script for the classic "Napoleon Scene" was probably supplied by Groucho.

On January 16, 1977, the Marx Brothers were inducted into the Motion Picture Hall of Fame.

Many television shows and movies have used Marx Brothers references. ''Animaniacs'' and ''Tiny Toons'', for example, have featured Marx Brothers jokes and skits. Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) on ''M*A*S*H'' occasionally put on a fake nose and glasses, and, holding a cigar, did a Groucho impersonation to amuse patients recovering from surgery. Bugs Bunny also impersonated Groucho Marx in 1947 cartoon ''Slick Hare''. In the ''Airwolf'' episode 'Condemned', four anti-virus formulae for a deadly plague were named after the four Marx Brothers.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Harpo Marx appeared as himself in a sketch on ''I Love Lucy'' in which he and Lucille Ball reprised the mirror routine from ''Duck Soup'', with Lucy dressed up as Harpo. Lucy had met the Marxes when she appeared in a supporting role in an earlier Marx Brothers film, ''Room Service''. Chico once appeared on ''I've Got a Secret'' dressed up as Harpo; his secret was shown in a caption reading "I'm actually Chico Marx."

Filmography

Films with the Four Marx Brothers:

''Humor Risk'' (1921), previewed once and never released; thought to be lost

''The Cocoanuts'' (1929), released by Paramount Pictures

''Animal Crackers'' (1930), released by Paramount

''The House That Shadows Built'' (1931), released by Paramount (short subject)

''Monkey Business'' (1931), released by Paramount

''Horse Feathers'' (1932), released by Paramount

''Duck Soup'' (1933), released by Paramount

Films with the three Marx Brothers (post-Zeppo):

''A Night at the Opera'' (1935), released by MGM

''A Day at the Races'' (1937), released by MGM

''Room Service'' (1938), released by RKO Radio Pictures

''At the Circus'' (1939), released by MGM

''Go West'' (1940), released by MGM

''The Big Store'' (1941), released by MGM

''A Night in Casablanca'' (1946), released by United Artists

''Love Happy'' (1949), released by United Artists

''The Story of Mankind'' (1957), released by Warner Brothers (not a Marx Brothers film, but the three brothers perform separate cameos)

Solo endeavors:

Groucho:

*''Copacabana'' (1947), released by United Artists

*''Mr. Music'' (1951), released by Paramount

*''Double Dynamite'' (1951), released by RKO

*''A Girl in Every Port'' (1952), released by RKO

*''Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?'' (1957), released by 20th Century Fox (uncredited)

*''The Mikado'' (1960), made for television

*''Skidoo'' (1968), released by Paramount.

Harpo:

*''Too Many Kisses'' (1925), released by Paramount

*''Stage Door Canteen'' (1943), released by United Artists (cameo)

Chico:

*''Papa Romani'' (1950), television pilot

Zeppo:

*''A Kiss in the Dark'' (1925), released by Paramount (cameo)

Characters

{|class="wikitable" |- ! Film || Year || Groucho || Chico || Harpo || Zeppo |- | ''Humor Risk'' || 1921 || The Villain || The Italian || Watson, Detective || The Love Interest |- | ''Too Many Kisses'' || 1925 || || || The Village Peter Pan || |- | ''The Cocoanuts'' || 1929 || Mr. Hammer || Chico || Harpo || Jamison |- | ''Animal Crackers'' || 1930 || Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding || Signor Emmanuel Ravelli || The Professor || Horatio Jamison |- | ''The House That Shadows Built'' || 1931 || Caesar's Ghost || Tomalio || The Merchant of Weiners || Sammy Brown |- | ''Monkey Business'' || 1931 || Groucho || Chico || Harpo || Zeppo |- | ''Horse Feathers'' || 1932 || Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff || Baravelli || Pinky || Frank Wagstaff |- | ''Duck Soup'' || 1933 || Rufus T. Firefly || Chicolini || Pinky || Lt. Bob Roland |- | ''A Night at the Opera'' || 1935 || Otis B. Driftwood || Fiorello || Tomasso || |- | ''A Day at the Races'' || 1937 || Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush* || Tony || Stuffy || |- | ''Room Service'' || 1938 || Gordon Miller || Harry Binelli || Faker Englund || |- | ''At the Circus'' || 1939 || J. Cheever Loophole || Antonio Pirelli || Punchy || |- | ''Go West'' || 1940 || S. Quentin Quale || Joe Panello || Rusty Panello || |- | ''The Big Store'' || 1941 || Wolf J. Flywheel || Ravelli || Wacky || |- | ''A Night in Casablanca'' || 1946 || Ronald Kornblow || Corbaccio || Rusty || |- | ''Love Happy'' || 1949 || Sam Grunion || Faustino the Great || Harpo || |- | ''The Story of Mankind'' || 1957 || Peter Minuit || Monk || Sir Isaac Newton || |- |}

* (To avoid a possible lawsuit, this name was chosen instead of the intended "Quackenbush" after it was discovered that there were around 30 real doctors by this name.)

Ownership status of films

All the films that were released still exist, though not always in the form they were originally released, ''Horse Feathers'' being the most obvious example. However, due to certain studios selling many of their films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, the rights to many of the Marx Brothers' films have changed hands over the years.

Paramount films

In 1957, Paramount sold many of its pre-1950 sound features to EMKA, Ltd. - a subsidiary of the Music Corporation of America. After MCA merged with Universal Pictures in 1962, the rights to these films went to Universal (now a part of NBC Universal).

MGM films

MGM held on to their Marx Brothers films longer than Paramount did. In 1986, media mogul Ted Turner bought MGM outright. But after amassing huge debts, Turner sold the studio, but kept the pre-1986 MGM library for his own company, Turner Entertainment. Today, Turner Entertainment is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with Warner Bros. handling sales and distribution.

''Room Service''

Due to being an RKO film, the transfer of this film's rights has been more complicated than most other Marx Brothers films. In 1955, RKO sold television rights to many of their films to C&C; Television for most markets, and General Tire for markets in which they owned TV stations. General's rights ended up being auctioned as successor RKO General was in the midst of a licensing scandal. Meanwhile, C&C; sold its rights to United Artists in 1971. UA was in turn sold to MGM in 1981. Turner inherited UA's rights as part of his acquisition of MGM's library. Turner then acquired television rights in the markets where RKO had owned stations. All US and Canadian and Region 4 rights are now with WB/Turner.

On the other hand, distribution rights in the rest of the world have been sold on a country-by-country basis. For example, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment purchased the underlying UK rights in later years, and passed on to Universal following the sale of PolyGram to Universal.

''A Night in Casablanca''

Warners now owns this film as part of the Castle Hill Productions library.

''Love Happy''

This and many other UA films released before 1952 were sold to National Telefilm Associates in 1955. In 1984, NTA changed its name to Republic Pictures, which itself became part of the Spelling Entertainment Group in the mid-1990s. Spelling was sold to Paramount's current parent Viacom in 1999.

In the mid-1990s, Republic licensed US video rights to Artisan Entertainment. Artisan was sold to Lions Gate Entertainment in 2003. Then, in 2006, US video rights to certain Republic properties - including ''Love Happy'' - reverted to Paramount, who also owns video rights in Region 4 and in France.

Television distribution is now in the hands of Trifecta Entertainment & Media, having inherited the rights from NTA, Republic, Worldvision Enterprises, Paramount Domestic Television, CBS Paramount Domestic Television, and CBS Television Distribution. Video rights in much of the world are also divided by country, with Universal owning the UK video rights.

Awards and honors

The Marx Brothers were collectively named #20 on AFI's list of the Top 25 American male screen legends. They are the only group to be so honored.

See also

Margaret Dumont

Thelma Todd

References

Notes

Further reading

Marx, Groucho, ''Beds'' (1930) Farrar & Rinehart, (1976) Bobbs-Merrill

Marx, Groucho, ''Many Happy Returns'' (1942) Simon & Schuster

Crichton, Kyle, ''The Marx Brothers'' (1950) Doubleday & Co.

Marx, Arthur, ''Life with Groucho'' (1954) Simon & Schuster, (revised as ''My Life with Groucho: A Son's Eye View'', 1988) ISBN 0-330-31132-8

Marx, Groucho, ''Groucho and Me'' (1959) Random House, (1989) Fireside Books ISBN 0-306-80666-5

Marx, Harpo (with Barber, Rowland), ''Harpo Speaks!'' (1961) Bernard Geis Associates, (1985) Limelight Editions ISBN 0-87910-036-2

Marx, Groucho, ''Memoirs of a Mangy Lover'' (1963) Bernard Geis Associates, (2002) Da Capo Press ISBN 0-306-81104-9

Marx, Groucho, ''The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx'' (1967, 2007) Simon & Schuster ISBN 0-306-80607-X

Zimmerman, Paul D., ''The Marx Brothers at the Movies'' (1968) G.P. Putnam's Sons

Eyles, Allen, ''The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy'' (1969) A.S. Barnes

Robinson, David, ''The Great Funnies: A History of Film Comedy'' (1969) E.P. Dutton

Durgnat, Raymond, "Four Against Alienation" from ''The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image'' (1970) Dell

Maltin, Leonard, ''Movie Comedy Teams'' (1970, revised 1985) New American Library

Anobile, Richard J. (ed.), ''Why a Duck?: Visual and Verbal Gems from the Marx Brothers Movies'' (1971) Avon Books

Bergman, Andrew, "Some Anarcho-Nihilist Laff Riots" from ''We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films'' (1971) New York University Press

Marx, Arthur, ''Son of Groucho'' (1972) David McKay Co. ISBN 0-679-50355-2

Adamson, Joe, ''Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo'' (1973, 1983) Simon & Schuster

Kalmar, Bert, and Perelman, S. J., ''The Four Marx Brothers in Monkey Business and Duck Soup'' (Classic Film Scripts) (1973) Simon & Schuster

Mast, Gerald, ''The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies'' (1973, 2nd ed. 1979) University of Chicago Press

McCaffrey, Donald W., "Zanies in a Stage-Movieland" from ''The Golden Age of Sound Comedy'' (1973) A. S. Barnes

Anobile, Richard J. (ed.), ''Hooray for Captain Spaulding!: Verbal and Visual Gems from Animal Crackers'' (1974) Avon Books

Anobile, Richard J., ''The Marx Bros. Scrapbook'' (1974) Grosset & Dunlap, (1975) Warner Books

Wolf, William, ''The Marx Brothers'' (1975) Pyramid Library

Marx, Groucho, ''The Groucho Phile'' (1976) Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Marx, Groucho (with Arce, Hector), ''The Secret Word Is GROUCHO'' (1976) G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Byron, Stuart and Weis, Elizabeth (eds.), ''The National Society of Film Critics on Movie Comedy'' (1977) Grossman/Viking

Maltin, Leonard, ''The Great Movie Comedians'' (1978) Crown Publishers

Arce, Hector, ''Groucho'' (1979) G. P. Putnam's Sons

Chandler, Charlotte, ''Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho & His Friends'' (1978) Doubleday & Co., (2007) Simon & Schuster ISBN 0-14-005222-4

Marx, Maxine, ''Growing Up with Chico'' (1980) Prentice-Hall, (1984) Simon & Schuster

Weales, Gerald, ''Canned Goods as Caviar: American Film Comedy of the 1930s'' (1985) University of Chicago Press

Gehring, Wes D., ''The Marx Brothers: A Bio-Bibliography'' (1987) Greenwood Press

Barson, Michael (ed.), ''Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel: The Marx Brothers Lost Radio Show'' (1988) Pantheon Books

Allen, Miriam Marx, ''Love, Groucho: Letters from Groucho Marx to His Daughter Miriam'' (1992) Faber & Faber ISBN 0-571-12915-3

Eyles, Allen, ''The Complete Films of the Marx Brothers'' (1992) Carol Publishing Group

Gehring, Wes D., ''Groucho and W.C. Fields: Huckster Comedians'' (1994) University Press of Mississippi

Mitchell, Glenn, ''The Marx Brothers Encyclopedia'' (1996) B.T. Batsford Ltd., (revised 2003) Reynolds & Hearn ( ISBN 0-7134-7838-1)

Stoliar, Steve, ''Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House'' (1996) General Publishing Group ISBN 1-881649-73-3

Dwan, Robert, ''As Long As They're Laughing!: Groucho Marx and You Bet Your Life'' (2000) Midnight Marquee Press, Inc.

Kanfer, Stefan, ''Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx'' (2000) Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 0-375-70207-5

Bego, Mark, ''The Marx Brothers'' (2001) Pocket Essentials

Louvish, Simon, ''Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers'' (2001) Thomas Dunne Books ISBN 0-312-25292-7)

Gehring, Wes D., ''Film Clowns of the Depression'' (2007) McFarland & Co.

Keesey, Douglas, with Duncan, Paul (ed.), ''Marx Bros.'' (2007) Movie Icons series, Taschen

Marx, Bill, ''Son of Harpo Speaks!'' (2007) BearManor Media ISBN 1-59393-062-3

External links

www.marx-brothers.org

List of Radio Appearances by the Marx Brothers

Marxology

The Marx Brothers Museum

Marx Brothers Night at the Opera Treasury

Marx Brothers tribute page

Category:Show business families Category:Jewish families Category:Jewish comedy and humor * Category:People from New York City Category:Vaudeville performers Category:American comedy troupes Category:Articles about multiple people Category:Sibling groups

ar:الإخوة ماركس ast:Hermanos Marx be-x-old:Браты Маркс bs:Braća Marx br:Ar Vreudeur Marx ca:Germans Marx cs:Bratři Marxové cy:Brodyr Marx da:Marx Brothers de:Marx Brothers es:Hermanos Marx eo:Fratoj Marx eu:Marx anaiak fa:برادران مارکس fr:Marx Brothers gl:Irmáns Marx ko:마르크스 형제들 hr:Braća Marx id:Marx Brothers is:Marx-bræður it:Fratelli Marx he:האחים מרקס ka:ძმები მარქსები sw:Marx Brothers la:Fratres Marx lb:Marx Brothers lt:Broliai Marksai hu:Marx fivérek ml:മാർക്സ് സഹോദരന്മാർ mr:मार्क्स बंधू mn:Ах дүү Маркс нар nl:The Marx Brothers ja:マルクス兄弟 no:Brødrene Marx pl:Bracia Marx pt:Irmãos Marx ro:Frații Marx ru:Братья Маркс simple:Marx Brothers sl:Bratje Marx szl:Braćiki Marx srn:Den Marx Brada sr:Браћа Маркс sh:Braća Marx fi:Marxin veljekset sv:Bröderna Marx tl:Ang Magkakapatid na Marx th:พี่น้องมารซ์ tr:Marx Kardeşler uk:Брати Маркс vi:Anh em nhà Marx vo:Blodef: Marx yi:מארקס די ברידער bat-smg:Bruolē Marksā zh:馬克思兄弟

bgcolour	silver
name	Maurits Cornelis Escher
birth date	June 17, 1898
birth place	Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
death date	March 27, 1972
death place	Laren, The Netherlands
nationality	Dutch
field	Drawing, Printmaking
influenced by	Giovanni Battista Piranesi
works	Relativity, Waterfall, Hand with Reflecting Sphere
awards	Knighthood of the Order of Orange-Nassau }}

Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972), usually referred to as M. C. Escher (, ), was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.

Early life

Maurits Cornelis, nicknamed "Mauk", was born in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, in a house that forms part of the Princessehof Ceramics Museum today. He was the youngest son of civil engineer George Arnold Escher and his second wife, Sara Gleichman. In 1903, the family moved to Arnhem, where he attended primary school and secondary school until 1918.

He was a sickly child, and was placed in a special school at the age of seven and failed the second grade. Though he excelled at drawing, his grades were generally poor. He also took carpentry and piano lessons until he was thirteen years old. In 1919, Escher attended the ''Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts''. He briefly studied architecture, but he failed a number of subjects (partly due to a persistent skin infection) and switched to decorative arts. Here he studied under Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, with whom he would remain friends for years. In 1922 Escher left the school, having gained experience in drawing and making woodcuts.

Later life

In 1922, an important year of his life, Escher traveled through Italy (Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena, Ravello) and Spain (Madrid, Toledo, Granada). He was impressed by the Italian countryside and by the Alhambra, a fourteenth-century Moorish castle in Granada, Spain. He came back to Italy regularly in the following years. In Italy he met ''Jetta Umiker'', whom he married in 1924. The young couple settled down in Rome and stayed there until 1935, when the political climate under Mussolini became unbearable. Their son, ''Giorgio Arnaldo Escher'', named after his grandfather, was born in Rome. The family next moved to Château-d'Œx, Switzerland, where they remained for two years.

Escher, who had been very fond of and inspired by the landscapes in Italy, was decidedly unhappy in Switzerland, so in 1937, the family moved again, to Ukkel, a small town near Brussels, Belgium. World War II forced them to move in January 1941, this time to Baarn, the Netherlands, where Escher lived until 1970. Most of Escher's better-known pictures date from this period. The sometimes cloudy, cold, wet weather of the Netherlands allowed him to focus intently on his works, and only during 1962, when he underwent surgery, was there a time when no new images were created.

Escher moved to the Rosa Spier house in Laren in 1970, a retirement home for artists where he had his own studio. He died at the home on 27 March 1972, at age 73.

Works

Escher's first print of an impossible reality was ''Still Life and Street'', 1937. His artistic expression was created from images in his mind, rather than directly from observations and travels to other countries. Well known examples of his work also include ''Drawing Hands'', a work in which two hands are shown, each drawing the other; ''Sky and Water'', in which light plays on shadow to morph the water background behind fish figures into bird figures on a sky background; and ''Ascending and Descending'', in which lines of people ascend and descend stairs in an infinite loop, on a construction which is impossible to build and possible to draw only by taking advantage of quirks of perception and perspective.

He worked primarily in the media of lithographs and woodcuts, though the few mezzotints he made are considered to be masterpieces of the technique. In his graphic art, he portrayed mathematical relationships among shapes, figures and space. Additionally, he explored interlocking figures using black and white to enhance different dimensions. Integrated into his prints were mirror images of cones, spheres, cubes, rings and spirals.

In addition to sketching landscape and nature in his early years, he also sketched insects, which frequently appeared in his later work. His first artistic work, completed in 1922, featured eight human heads divided in different planes. Later around 1924, he lost interest in "regular division" of planes, and turned to sketching landscapes in Italy with irregular perspectives that are impossible in natural form.

Although Escher did not have mathematical training—his understanding of mathematics was largely visual and intuitive—Escher's work had a strong mathematical component, and more than a few of the worlds which he drew are built around impossible objects such as the Necker cube and the Penrose triangle. Many of Escher's works employed repeated tilings called tessellations. Escher's artwork is especially well liked by mathematicians and scientists, who enjoy his use of polyhedra and geometric distortions. For example, in ''Gravity'', multi-colored turtles poke their heads out of a stellated dodecahedron.

The mathematical influence in his work emerged around 1936, when he was journeying the Mediterranean with the Adria Shipping Company. Specifically, he became interested in order and symmetry. Escher described his journey through the Mediterranean as "the richest source of inspiration I have ever tapped."

After his journey to the Alhambra, Escher tried to improve upon the art works of the Moors using geometric grids as the basis for his sketches, which he then overlaid with additional designs, mainly animals such as birds and lions.

His first study of mathematics, which would later lead to its incorporation into his art works, began with George Pólya's academic paper on plane symmetry groups sent to him by his brother Berend. This paper inspired him to learn the concept of the 17 wallpaper groups (plane symmetry groups). Utilizing this mathematical concept, Escher created periodic tilings with 43 colored drawings of different types of symmetry. From this point on he developed a mathematical approach to expressions of symmetry in his art works. Starting in 1937, he created woodcuts using the concept of the 17 plane symmetry groups.

In 1941, Escher summarized his findings in a notebook, which he labeled ''Regelmatige vlakverdeling in asymmetrische congruente veelhoeken'' ("Regular division of the plane with asymmetric congruent polygons"). His intention in writing this was to aid himself in integrating mathematics into art. Escher is considered a research mathematician of his time because of his documentation with this paper. In it, he studied color based division, and developed a system of categorizing combinations of shape, color and symmetrical properties.

Around 1956, Escher explored the concept of representing infinity on a two-dimensional plane. Discussions with Canadian mathematician H.S.M. Coxeter inspired Escher's interest in hyperbolic tessellations, which are regular tilings of the hyperbolic plane. Escher's wood engravings ''Circle Limit I–IV'' demonstrate this concept. In 1995, Coxeter published his finding that these works were extraordinarily accurate: "Escher got it absolutely right to the millimeter."

His works brought him fame: he was awarded the Knighthood of the Order of Orange Nassau in 1955. Subsequently he regularly designed art for dignitaries around the world. An asteroid, 4444 Escher, was named in his honour in 1985.

In 1958, he published a book entitled ''Regular Division of the Plane'', with reproductions of a series of woodcuts based on tessellations of the plane, in which he described the systematic buildup of mathematical designs in his artworks. He emphasized, "Mathematicians have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain."

Overall, his early love of Roman and Italian landscapes and of nature led to his interest in the concept of regular division of a plane, which he applied in over 150 colored works. Other mathematical principles evidenced in his works include the superposition of a hyperbolic plane on a fixed 2-dimensional plane, and the incorporation of three-dimensional objects such as spheres, columns and cubes into his works. For example, in a print called "Reptiles", he combined two and three-dimensional images. In one of his papers, Escher emphasized the importance of dimensionality and described himself as "irritated" by flat shapes: "I make them come out of the plane."

Escher also studied the mathematical concepts of topology. He learned additional concepts in mathematics from the British mathematician Roger Penrose. From this knowledge he created ''Waterfall'' and ''Up and Down'', featuring irregular perspectives similar to the concept of the Möbius strip.

Escher printed ''Metamorphosis I'' in 1937, which was a beginning part of a series of designs that told a story through the use of pictures. These works demonstrated a culmination of Escher's skills to incorporate mathematics into art. In ''Metamorphosis I'', he transformed convex polygons into regular patterns in a plane to form a human motif. This effect symbolizes his change of interest from landscape and nature to regular division of a plane.

One of his most notable works is the piece ''Metamorphosis III'', which is wide enough to cover all the walls in a room, and then loop back onto itself.

After 1953, Escher became a lecturer at many organizations. A planned series of lectures in North America in 1962 was cancelled due to an illness, but the illustrations and text for the lectures, written out in full by Escher, were later published as part of the book ''Escher on Escher''. In July 1969 he finished his last work, a woodcut called ''Snakes'', in which snakes wind through a pattern of linked rings which fade to infinity toward both the center and the edge of a circle.

Legacy

The special way of thinking and the rich graphic work of M.C. Escher has had a continuous influence in science and art, as well as being referenced in popular culture. Ownership of the Escher intellectual property and of his unique art works have been separated from each other.

In 1969, Escher's business advisor, Jan W. Vermeulen, author of a biography in Dutch on the artist, established the M.C. Escher Stichting (M.C. Escher Foundation), and transferred into this entity virtually all of Escher's unique work as well as hundreds of his original prints. These works were lent by the Foundation to the Hague Museum. Upon Escher's death, his three sons dissolved the Foundation, and they became partners in the ownership of the art works. In 1980, this holding was sold to an American art dealer and the Hague Museum. The Museum obtained all of the documentation and the smaller portion of the art works.

The copyrights remained the possession of the three sons – who later sold them to Cordon Art, a Dutch company. Control of the copyrights was subsequently transferred to The M.C. Escher Company B.V. of Baarn, Netherlands, which licenses use of the copyrights on all of Escher's art and on his spoken and written text, and also controls the trademarks. Filing of the trademark "M.C. Escher" in the United States was opposed, but the Dutch company prevailed in the courts on the grounds that an artist or his heirs have a right to trademark his name.

A related entity, the M.C. Escher Foundation of Baarn, promotes Escher's work by organizing exhibitions, publishing books and producing films about his life and work.

The primary institutional collections of original works by M.C. Escher are the Escher Museum, a subsidiary of the Haags Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); the Israel Museum (Jerusalem); Huis ten Bosch (Nagasaki, Japan); and the Boston Public Library.

''Gödel, Escher, Bach'' by Douglas Hofstadter, published in 1979, discusses the ideas of self-reference and strange loops, drawing on a wide range of artistic and scientific work, including the art of M. C. Escher and the music of J. S. Bach, to illustrate ideas behind Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

Selected works

References

Further reading

M.C. Escher, ''The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher'', Ballantine, 1971. Includes Escher's own commentary.

M.C. Escher, ''The Fantastic World of M.C. Escher'', Video collection of examples of the development of his art, and interviews, Director, Michele Emmer.

Locher, J.L. (2000). ''The Magic of M. C. Escher''. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-6720-0.

Ernst, Bruno; Escher, M.C. (1995). ''The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher (Taschen Series)''. TASCHEN America Llc. ISBN 1-886155-00-3 Escher's art with commentary by Ernst on Escher's life and art, including several pages on his use of polyhedra.

Abrams (1995). ''The M.C. Escher Sticker Book''. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-2638-5 .

"Escher, M. C." The World Book Encyclopedia. 10th ed. 2001.

O'Connor, J. J. Escher. 01 2000. University of St Andrews, Scotland. 17 June 2005.

Schattschneider, Doris and Walker, Wallace. ''M. C. Escher Kaleidocycles'', Pomegranate Communications; Petaluma, California, 1987. ISBN 0-906212-28-6.

Schattschneider, Doris. ''M.C. Escher : visions of symmetry'', New York, N.Y. : Harry N. Abrams, 2004. ISBN 0-8109-4308-5.

''M.C. Escher's legacy: a centennial celebration''; collection of articles coming from the M.C. Escher Centennial Conference, Rome, 1998 / Doris Schattschneider, Michele Emmer (editors). Berlin; London: Springer-Verlag, 2003. ISBN 3-540-42458-X (alk. paper), ISBN 3-540-42458-X (hbk).

''M.C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work'', edited by J. L. Locher, Amsterdam 1981.

External links

. . . . — physical replicas of some of Escher's "impossible" designs. . . Copyright issue regarding Escher from the Artquest Artlaw archive.

Gallery of tessellations by M.C. Escher

Category:Dutch illustrators Category:Dutch printmakers Category:Modern printmakers Category:1898 births Category:1972 deaths Category:Impossible objects Category:People from Leeuwarden

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name	James Randi
birth name	Randall James Hamilton Zwinge
birth date	August 07, 1928
birth place	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
occupation	Magician, writer, skeptic
website	www.randi.org
nationality	Canadian-American
religion	None (Atheist)
residence	}}

James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928) is a Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Randi began his career as a magician named The Amazing Randi, but after retiring at age 60, he began investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively calls "woo-woo."

Although often referred to as a "debunker," Randi rejects that title owing to its perceived bias, instead describing himself as an "investigator." He has written about the paranormal, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' and was occasionally featured on the television program ''Penn & Teller: Bullshit!''. The JREF sponsors The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge offering a prize of US$1,000,000 to eligible applicants who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties.

Early life

Randi was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and has a younger brother and sister. He took up magic after reading magic books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He confounded doctors who expected he would never walk again. Although a brilliant student, Randi often skipped school, and he dropped out of high school at 17 to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. In his twenties, Randi posed as a psychic to establish that they were actually doing simple tricks and briefly wrote an astrological column in the Canadian tabloid ''Midnight'' under the name "Zo-ran," by simply shuffling up items from newspaper astrology columns and pasting them randomly into a column. In his thirties, Randi worked in Philippine night clubs and all across Japan. He witnessed many tricks that were presented as being supernatural. One of his earliest reported experiences is that of seeing an evangelist using the "one-ahead" routine to convince churchgoers of his divine powers.

Career

Magician

Randi worked as a professional stage magician, or "conjurer" as he prefers to be called, and escapologist beginning in 1946, initially under his birth name, Randall Zwinge, and then as The Amazing Randi. Early in his career, Randi was part of numerous stunts involving his escape from jail cells and safes. On February 7, 1956, he appeared live on ''The Today Show'', remaining in a sealed metal coffin submerged in a hotel swimming pool for 104 minutes, breaking what was said to be Houdini's record of 93 minutes.

Randi was the host of ''The Amazing Randi Show'' on New York radio station WOR in the mid 1960s. This radio show, which filled Long John Nebel's old slot with similar content after Nebel went to WNBC in 1962, had frequent pro-paranormal guests, including Randi's then-friend James Moseley. Randi, in turn, spoke at Moseley's 1967 Fourth Congress of Scientific Ufologists in New York City, stating, "Let's not fool ourselves. There are some garden variety liars involved in all this. But in among all the trash and nonsense perpetrated in the name of Ufology, I think there is a small grain of truth."

Randi also hosted numerous television specials and went on several world tours. Then Randi appeared as "The Amazing Randi" on a television show titled ''Wonderama'' from 1967 to 1972, and as host of a failed revival of the 1950s children's show ''The Magic Clown'' in 1970. In the February 2, 1974, issue of ''Abracadabra'' (a British conjuring magazine), Randi defined the magic community, saying, "I know of no calling which depends so much upon mutual trust and faith as does ours." In the December 2003 issue of ''The Linking Ring'', the monthly publication of The International Brotherhood of Magicians, ''Points to Ponder: Another Matter of Ethics,'' p. 97, it is stated, "Perhaps Randi's ethics are what make him Amazing" and "The Amazing Randi not only talks the talk, he walks the walk."

During Alice Cooper's 1973–1974 tour, Randi performed as the dentist and executioner on stage, and designed and built several of the stage props, including the guillotine. Shortly after that, in February 1975, Randi escaped from a straitjacket while suspended upside-down over Niagara Falls in the winter on the Canadian TV program ''World of Wizards''.

Randi was once accused of actually using "psychic powers" to perform acts such as spoon bending. James Alcock relates this incident, which occurred at a meeting where Randi was duplicating the performances of Uri Geller: A professor from the University at Buffalo shouted out that Randi was a fraud. Randi said, "Yes, indeed, I'm a trickster, I'm a cheat, I'm a charlatan, that's what I do for a living. Everything I've done here was by trickery." The professor shouted back: "That's not what I mean. You're a fraud because you're pretending to do these things through trickery, but you're actually using psychic powers and misleading us by not admitting it." The famous author and believer in spiritualism Arthur Conan Doyle had years earlier made a similar accusation against the magician Harry Houdini. A similar event involved Senator Claiborne Pell. Pell believed in psychic phenomena. When Randi demonstrated viewing a hidden drawing by using trickery, Pell refused to believe that it was a trick, saying, "I think Randi may be a psychic and doesn't realize it."

Author

Randi is author of ''Conjuring'' (1992), a biographical history of noted magicians. The book is subtitled: ''Being a Definitive History of the Venerable Arts of Sorcery, Prestidigitation, Wizardry, Deception, & Chicanery and of the Mountebanks & Scoundrels Who have Perpetrated these Subterfuges on a Bewildered Public, in short, MAGIC!''. The book selects the most influential magicians and explains their history in the context of strange deaths and careers on the road. This work expanded on the 1976 book ''Houdini, His Life and Art'', co-authored with Bert Randolph Sugar, which focused on Houdini and his cohorts. Randi also wrote a children's book in 1989 titled ''The Magic World of the Amazing Randi'', which introduced children to magic tricks. In addition to his magic books, he has written several educational works about the paranormal and pseudoscientific. These include biographies of Uri Geller and Nostradamus as well as reference material on other major paranormal figures. He is currently working on ''A Magician in the Laboratory'', which recounts his application of skepticism to science, though in January 2011, he expressed doubts as to whether it would be finished. He is a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.

Skeptic

Randi entered the international spotlight in 1972 when he publicly challenged the claims of Uri Geller. Randi accused Geller of being nothing more than a charlatan and a fraud who used standard magic tricks to accomplish his allegedly paranormal feats, and he supported his claims in the book ''The Truth About Uri Geller''. Geller unsuccessfully sued Randi for $15 million in 1991. Geller's suit against the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) was thrown out in 1995, and he was ordered to pay $120,000 for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

Randi was a founding fellow and prominent member of CSICOP. During the period when Geller was filing numerous civil suits against him, CSICOP's leadership, wanting to avoid becoming a target of Geller's litigation, requested that Randi refrain from commenting on Geller. Randi refused and resigned. However, he still maintains a respectful relationship with the group and frequently writes articles for its magazine.

Randi has gone on to write several books criticizing beliefs and claims regarding the paranormal. He has also demonstrated flaws in studies suggesting the existence of paranormal phenomena; in his Project Alpha hoax, Randi revealed that he had been able to orchestrate a three-year-long compromise of a privately funded psychic research experiment. The hoax became a scandal and demonstrated the shortcomings of many paranormal research projects at the university level.

Randi has appeared on numerous TV shows, sometimes to directly debunk the claimed abilities of fellow guests. In a 1981 appearance on ''That's My Line'', Randi appeared opposite psychic James Hydrick, who claimed that he could move things with his mind and demonstrated this ability on live television by apparently turning a page in a telephone book without touching it. Randi, having determined that Hydrick was surreptitiously blowing on the book, arranged packaging peanuts (polystyrene foam shapes) on the table in front of the telephone book for the demonstration, preventing Hydrick from demonstrating his abilities, which would have been exposed when the blowing moved the packaging. Many years later, Hydrick admitted his fraud.

Randi was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Genius award in 1986. The money was used for Randi's comprehensive exposé of faith healers, including Peter Popoff, W.V. Grant and Ernest Angley. When Popoff was exposed, he was forced to declare bankruptcy within the year.

In 1988, Randi tested the gullibility of the media by perpetrating a fraud of his own. By teaming up with Australia's ''60 Minutes'' program and by releasing a fake press package, he built up publicity for a spirit channeler named Carlos who was actually artist Jose Alvarez, a friend of Randi's. Randi would tell him what to say through sophisticated radio equipment. The media and the public were taken in, as no reporter bothered to check Carlos's credentials and history, which were all fabricated. The hoax was exposed on ''60 Minutes''; Carlos and Randi explained how they pulled it off.

In the book ''The Faith Healers'', Randi explains his anger and relentlessness as arising out of compassion for the helpless victims of frauds. Randi has also been critical of João de Deus (John of God), a self-proclaimed psychic surgeon who has received international attention. Randi observed, referring to psychic surgery, "To any experienced conjurer, the methods by which these seeming miracles are produced are very obvious."

In 1982, Randi verified the abilities of Arthur Lintgen, a Philadelphia physician who is able to determine the classical music recorded on a vinyl LP solely by examining the groove on the record. However, Lintgen does not claim to have any paranormal ability, merely knowledge of the way that the groove forms patterns on particular recordings.

James Randi stated that Daniel Dunglas Home, who allegedly could play an accordion that was locked in a cage, without touching it, was caught cheating on a few occasions, but the episodes were never made public, and that the accordion in question was a one-octave mouth organ that Home concealed under his large moustache. James Randi writes that one-octave mouth organs were found in Home's belongings after his death. According to Randi 'around 1960' William Lindsay Gresham told Randi he had seen these mouth organs in the Home collection at the Society for Psychical Research. Eric Dingwall, who catalogued Home's collection on its arrival at the SPR does not record the presence of the mouth organs. According to Peter Lamont, the author of an extensive Home biography, "It is unlikely Dingwall would have missed these or did not make them public."

James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)

In 1996, Randi established the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi and his colleagues update JREF's blog, Swift. Topics have included the mathematics of the one-seventh area triangle. Randi also contributes a regular column, titled "'Twas Brillig," to The Skeptics Society's Skeptic Magazine. In his weekly commentary, Randi often gives examples of what he considers the nonsense that he deals with every day.

He has regularly featured on many podcasts that can be found online, including The Skeptics Society's official podcast Skepticality and the Center for Inquiry's official podcast Point of Inquiry. From September 2006 onwards, he has occasionally contributed to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast with a column titled "Randi Speaks." In addition, "The Amazing Show" is a podcast in which Randi shares various anecdotes in an interview format.

Views on religion

In his essay "Why I Deny Religion, How Silly and Fantastic It Is, and Why I'm a Dedicated and Vociferous Bright", Randi, who identifies himself as an atheist, has stated that many accounts in religious texts, including the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus Christ, and the parting of the Red Sea by Moses, are not believable. For example, Randi refers to the Virgin Mary as being "impregnated by a ghost of some sort, and as a result produced a son who could walk on water, raise the dead, turn water into wine, and multiply loaves of bread and fishes" and questions how Adam and Eve "could have two sons, one of whom killed the other, and yet managed to populate the earth without committing incest." He writes that, compared to the Bible, "''The Wizard of Oz'' is more believable. And more fun." In ''An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural'', he looks at a variety of spiritual practices skeptically. Of the meditation techniques of Guru Maharaj Ji (Prem Rawat) he writes: "Only the very naive were convinced that they had been let in on some sort of celestial secret."

The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) currently offers a prize of one million U.S. dollars to eligible applicants who can demonstrate a supernatural ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. Similar to the paranormal challenges of John Nevil Maskelyne and Houdini, in 1964, Randi put up $1,000 of his own money payable to anyone who could provide objective proof of the paranormal. Since then, the prize money has grown to the current $1,000,000, and has formal published rules. No one has progressed past the preliminary test, which is set up with parameters agreed to by both Randi and the applicant. He refuses to accept any challengers who might suffer serious injury or death as a result of the testing.

On ''Larry King Live'', March 6, 2001, Larry King asked Sylvia Browne if she would take the challenge and she agreed. Then Randi appeared with Browne on ''Larry King Live'' on September 3, 2001, and she again accepted the challenge. However, she has refused to be tested and Randi keeps a clock on his website recording the number of weeks that have passed since Browne accepted the challenge without following through. During ''Larry King Live'' on June 5, 2001, Randi challenged Rosemary Altea to undergo testing for the million dollars. However, Altea would not even address the question. Instead Altea, in part, replied "I agree with what he says, that there are many, many people who claim to be spiritual mediums, they claim to talk to the dead. There are many people, we all know this. There are cheats and charlatans everywhere." Then on January 26, 2007, Altea and Randi again appeared on ''Larry King Live''. Once again, she refused to answer whether or not she would take the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.

Starting on April 1, 2007, only those with an already existing media profile and the backing of a reputable academic were allowed to apply for the challenge. The resources freed up by not having to test obscure and possibly mentally ill claimants will then be used to more aggressively challenge notorious high-profile alleged psychics and mediums such as Sylvia Browne, Allison DuBois and John Edward with a campaign in the media.

JREF maintains a public log of past participants in the Million Dollar Challenge.

Legal disputes

Randi has been involved in a variety of legal disputes but claims that he has "never paid even one dollar or even one cent to anyone who ever sued me." However, he says, he has paid out large sums to personally defend himself in these suits.

Eldon Byrd

A Baltimore District Court found Randi guilty of defaming Byrd for calling him a "convicted child molester" because although Byrd had been found guilty of child pornography offences and admitted to molestation, the admission was part of a plea bargain so he was not actually convicted. No damages were awarded to Byrd.

Uri Geller

According to Randi, Geller tried to sue Randi a number of times, but never won, save for a ruling in a Japanese court that ordered Randi to pay Geller one third of one percent of what Geller had demanded, but this ruling was canceled, and the matter dropped when Geller decided to concentrate on another legal matter. Randi later stated that the phrase "shot himself in the head" was a metaphor that had been lost in translation. He had made a similar statement in English three years earlier in a Toronto newspaper: "The scientist shot himself after I showed him how the key bending trick was done." In 1991, Randi commented that Uri Geller's public performances were of the same quality as those found on the backs of cereal boxes. Geller sued both Randi and CSICOP. CSICOP argued that the organization was not responsible for Randi's statements. The court agreed that including CSICOP was frivolous and dropped them from the action, leaving Randi to face the action alone. Geller was ordered to pay substantial damages to CSICOP. Randi and Geller subsequently settled their dispute out of court, the details of which have been kept confidential. The settlement also included an agreement that Geller would not pursue Randi for the award in the Japanese case or other outstanding cases.

Other

Allison DuBois, on whose life the television series ''Medium'' was based, threatened Randi with legal action for using a photo of her from her website in his December 17, 2004, commentary without her permission. Randi removed the photo, and now uses a caricature of DuBois when mentioning her on his site, beginning with his December 23, 2005, commentary.

Late in 1996, Randi launched a libel suit against a Toronto-area psychic named Earl Gordon Curley. Curley had made multiple objectionable comments about Randi on Usenet. Despite prodding Randi via Usenet to sue (Curley's comments had implied that if Randi did not sue, then his allegations must be true), Curley seemed entirely surprised when Randi actually retained Toronto's largest law firm and initiated legal proceedings. The suit was eventually dropped in 1998 when Earl Curley died at the age of 51.

Sniffex, producer of a dowsing bomb detection device, unsuccessfully sued Randi and the JREF in 2007. Sniffex sued Randi for his comments regarding a government test in which the Sniffex device failed. The company was later investigated and charged with fraud.

Personal life

In 1987, Randi became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Randi has said that one reason he became an American citizen was an incident while on tour with Alice Cooper where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched the band's lockers during a performance. Nothing was found, yet the RCMP destroyed the room.

In February 2006, Randi underwent coronary artery bypass surgery. In early February 2006, he was declared to be in stable condition and "receiving excellent care" with his recovery proceeding well. The weekly commentary updates to his website were made by guests while he was hospitalized. Randi recovered after his surgery and was able to help organize and attend the 2007 Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada (an annual convention of scientists, magicians, skeptics, atheists and freethinkers).

Randi was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in June 2009. He had a ping pong ball-sized tumor removed from his intestines during laparoscopic surgery. He announced this a week later at the July 2009 The Amazing Meeting as well as the fact that he was scheduled to begin chemotherapy in the following weeks. He also said at the conference: "One day, I'm gonna die. That's all there is to it. Hey, it's too bad, but I've got to make room. I'm using a lot of oxygen and such—I think it's good use of oxygen myself, but of course, I'm a little prejudiced on the matter." Randi also said that after he is gone he does not want his fans to bother with a museum of magic named after him or burying him in a fancy tomb. Instead, he said, "I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller's eyes." Randi underwent his final chemotherapy session on December 31, 2009, as he explained in a January 12, 2010 video in which he related that his chemotherapy experience was not as unpleasant as he had imagined. In a video posted April 12, 2010, Randi stated that he has been given a clean bill of health.

In a March 21, 2010 blog entry, Randi came out as gay, a move he explained was inspired by seeing the 2008 biographical drama film ''Milk'', in which Sean Penn portrayed Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.

Awards and honors

In 1981, asteroid 3163 Randi was named after Randi, whose friend Carl Sagan influenced him to become an amateur astronomer. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship 1986 American Physical Society Joseph A. Burton Forum Award 1989

Richard Dawkins Award 2003

Philip J. Klass Award 2007 Independent Investigative Group IIG awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award, August 2007, previous recipients Carl Sagan and Harry Houdini.

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry In Praise of Reason Award, 2009

Elected a Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Fellow, 2010

World records

The following are Guinness records:

Randi was in a sealed casket for an hour and 44 minutes, which broke Harry Houdini's record of one hour and 31 minutes set on August 5, 1926. Randi was encased in a block of ice for 55 minutes.

Bibliography

''An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural'', 1995, St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-15119-5 (Online Version)

''Conjuring'', 1992 St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-09771-9

''Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions'', 1982, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-198-3

''Houdini, His Life and Art''. Putnam Pub Group (November 1976) ISBN 0-448-12552-8

''James Randi: Psychic Investigator'', 1991, ISBN 1-85283-144-8

''Test Your ESP Potential''. Dover Publications Inc. (December 31, 1982) ISBN 0-486-24269-2

''The Faith Healers'', 1987, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-369-2. (ISBN 0-87975-535-0 1989 edition) (Foreword by Carl Sagan)

''The Magic of Uri Geller'', 1982, ISBN 0-345-24796-5 (later renamed ''The Truth About Uri Geller'' ISBN 0-87975-199-1)

''The Magic World of the Amazing Randi''. Adams Media Corporation (September 1989) ISBN 1-55850-982-8

''The Mask of Nostradamus: The Prophecies of the World's Most Famous Seer'', 1990, Charles Scribner's Sons ISBN 0-684-19056-7 or ISBN 0-87975-830-9.

''Wrong!'' (Forthcoming) ''A Magician in the Laboratory''. (Forthcoming)

TV and film

Actor

''Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper'' (1974) as the Dentist/Executioner

''Ragtime'' (1981) (stunt coordinator: Houdini)

''Penn & Teller's'' Invisible Thread'' (1987) (TV)

''Penn & Teller Get Killed'' (1989) as the 3rd Rope Holder

''Beyond Desire'' (1994) as the Coroner

Himself

''Wonderama'' (1955) (TV) as The Amazing Randi

''I've Got a Secret'' (1965) (TV) as The Amazing Randi

''Happy Days'' – "The Magic Show" (1978) as the Amazing Randi

''Zembla'', 'De trucs van Char' (''The tricks Char uses''). (March 2008)

''ZDF German TV'' (2007)

''Wild Wild Web'' (1999)

''West 57th'' (1980s)

''Welt der Wunder – Kraft der Gedanken'' (January 2008)

''Today on NBC'' (1980s)

''The Don Lane Show'' (1980)

''That's My Line'' (1980) (Appeared with James Hydrick)

''The View'' ABC TV (1999)

''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' (32 appearances between 1973 and 1993)

''The Secret Cabaret'' (produced by Open Media for Channel 4 in the UK)

''The Power of Belief'' (October 6, 1998) (ABC News Special) (TV)

''People are Talking'' (1980s)

''The Patterson Show'' (1970s)

''The Art of Magic'' (1998) (TV)

''The Ultimate Psychic Challenge'' (Discovery Channel/Channel 4) (2003)

''Spotlight on James Randi'' (2002) (TV)

''Secrets of the Super Psychics'' (Channel 4/The Learning Channel), produced by Open Media, 1997/8

''Scams, Schemes, and Scoundrels'' (A&E; Special) (March 30, 1997)

''Raitre TV'' Italy (1991)

''Politically Incorrect'' with Bill Maher

''Penn & Teller: Bullshit!''

* End of the World (2003) TV Episode

* ESP (2003) TV Episode

* Signs from Heaven (2005) TV Episode

''Oprah Winfrey''

''NOVA'': Secrets of the Psychics (1993)

''Mitä ihmettä?'' (Finland) (2003) TV Series

''Midday Show'' (Australia) (1990s)

''Magic or Miracle'' (1983)

''Magic'' (2004) (mini) TV Series

''Larry King Live'' of CNN (June 5, 2001, September 3, 2001, and January 26, 2007)

''James Randi: Psychic Investigator'' (1991) (Open Media series for the ITV network)

''James Randi Budapesten'' – Hungarian documentary (free download for schools)

''Inside Edition'' – (1991, 2006, and 2007) TV

''Horizon'' – Homeopathy: The Test (2002) TV Episode

''Houdini Dead Men Talking'' (Biography Channel)

''Fornemmelse for snyd'' (2003) TV Series (also archive footage)

''Extraordinary People – The Million Dollar Mind Reader (September 2008).

''Exploring Psychic Powers Live'' (June 7, 1989) (Hosted by Bill Bixby)

''CBS This Morning'' (1990s)

''Anderson Cooper 360'', CNN (January 19, 2007 and January 30, 2007)

''A Question of Miracles'' (HBO) (1999)

''20/20'' ABC TV (May 11, 2007)

''Dilbert (TV series)'' parodied in "The Infomercial" (1999) TV Episode

Other media

James Randi can be heard speaking an introduction on Tommy Finkes song "Poet der Affen/Poet of the Apes", released on the album of the same name in 2010. The message was recorded by James Randi and sent to Tommy Finke via email.

See also

Pigasus Award

Project Alpha

Robert Todd Carroll's ''Skeptic's Dictionary''

Notes

External links

Official

James Randi Educational Foundation – Official website

James Randi Educational Foundation official YouTube channel

Video of short talk by Randi in 2007 at TED

Supportive

James Randi in the Skeptic's Dictionary

Project Alpha in the Skeptic's Dictionary

How Randi and fake psychic Carlos fooled millions

Media

James Randi interview (May 2009) from the podcast of MagicNewswire.com in which Mr. Randi discusses his career in magic, his feud with Uri Geller and more

James Randi interview (November 2007) from the BSAlert.com radio show where Mr. Randi discusses the TV show "Phenomenon," the current status of Uri Geller and his thoughts about whether society is becoming more or less superstitious.

"20 Major Aspects of Liars, Cheats, and Frauds" by James Randi"

The Power of Belief (Video clip) from ABC News

Randi's Internet Audio Show from the James Randi Educational Foundation

Skepticality Internet Radio

Transcripts (Sylvia Browne and Randi) (Sylvia Browne's manager and Randi) (Altea and James Randi) (Rosemary Altea and Randi) (Sylvia Browne and Randi)

Criticism

A Skeptical Look At James Randi ''Michael Prescott''

James Randi's response to criticism ''James Randi Educational Foundation''

Benveniste, Jacques, and Peter Jurgens. On the Role of Stage Magicians in Biological Research ''The Anomalist'' 1998

Thalbourne, Michael A, “Science versus showmanship: A history of the Randi hoax,” ''American Society for Psychical Research'' 89 (4) October 1995

Category:1928 births Category:Living people Category:American atheists Category:American magicians Category:American people of Canadian descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American skeptics Category:Atheism activists Category:Canadian atheists Category:Canadian emigrants to the United States Category:Canadian magicians Category:Canadian people of German descent Category:Canadian skeptics Category:People with cancer Category:Gay writers Category:LGBT writers from Canada Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from Toronto Category:Professional magicians Category:American humanists

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