The Trail to Martin Gardner

Perhaps the route is interesting anyway.

I had a question in mind from listening to my long series of podcasts on the History of English, because of an interesting discussion about the compound words in Anglo-Saxon poetry, specifically in Beowulf. As the word "walrus" was mentioned, I though of Tolkien, who had done many entries in the early W's for the Oxford English Dictionary, including walrus specifically.  I did a search for articles about that, which led me eventually to the OED site.  That there was an entry for Oxford English Dictionary for Kids was the basis of my recent post on that topic, as it struck me as odd that the OED would be that informal.

Reading about the etymology of walrus led me to Lewis Carroll, which led me to Martin Gardner. How long has it been since I thought of Martin Gardner? Good gravy, he was my hero in high school, and I have completely forgotten him. I read his mathematical recreations column in Scientific American faithfully, had a few of his books on mathematical games, and enjoyed his Annotated Alice In Wonderland greatly in college.  I kept the book until just a few years ago, when it became clear that none of my children were ever going to be interested.

Reading about Martin Gardner leads everywhere else in the known universe of knowledge, it seems. It may have been Gardner who led me down the primrose path of believing I might be a mathematician, because I so enjoyed the recreational math topics he introduced me to. I was not and am not a mathematician, but there have always been a few things I enjoyed, and I found many of them again reading the Wiki summary.

I should have kept up with him.