Martin Gardner

In France, Martin Gardner is best known for his mathematical recreations written as a science communicator. He who, strangely, never studied mathematics at university, but was a magician, philosopher, writer and publisher, left a much vaster work resulting from his multiple interests. Thus, new facets are discovered through his very original philosophical development of scientific skepticism or through his amazing and prolific literary production ranging from science fiction to poetry, including novels. And one will not fail to be amazed by exploring his mathemagic tricks.

The multiplication of mathematical discoveries leads, at the end of the 19th century, to the need for a structuration that involves questioning the foundations. The many paradoxes constructed within the framework of old theoretical systems lead to rethinking the definitions of various concepts previously perceived intuitively, such as infinity, sets, numbers… The work of Euclid having opened the way to an axiomatic approach, this is systematized throughout the 19th and 20th centuries with the work of Cantor, Hilbert, Peano, Russell, Gödel among many others. This approach is made possible by the formalization of logic, which results in the automatic processing of reasonings, opening the way to modern computer science.