John Horton Conway was an English mathematician. He was active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life.
Martin Gardner was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature – especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton. He was a leading authority on Lewis Carroll; The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll's two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies. He had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and in 1999, MAGIC magazine named him as one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century". He was considered the doyen of American puzzlers. He was a prolific and versatile author, publishing more than 100 books.
Recreational mathematics is mathematics carried out for recreation (entertainment) rather than as a strictly research- and application-based professional activity or as a part of a student's formal education. Although it is not necessarily limited to being an endeavor for amateurs, many topics in this field require no knowledge of advanced mathematics. Recreational mathematics involves mathematical puzzles and games, often appealing to children and untrained adults and inspiring their further study of the subject.
Ronald Lewis Graham was an American mathematician credited by the American Mathematical Society as "one of the principal architects of the rapid development worldwide of discrete mathematics in recent years". He was president of both the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America, and his honors included the Leroy P. Steele Prize for lifetime achievement and election to the National Academy of Sciences.
Marjorie Ruth Rice was an American amateur mathematician most famous for her discoveries of pentagonal tilings in geometry.
Richard Kenneth Guy was a British mathematician. He was a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Calgary. He is known for his work in number theory, geometry, recreational mathematics, combinatorics, and graph theory. He is best known for co-authorship of Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays and authorship of Unsolved Problems in Number Theory. He published more than 300 scholarly articles. Guy proposed the partially tongue-in-cheek "strong law of small numbers", which says there are not enough small integers available for the many tasks assigned to them – thus explaining many coincidences and patterns found among numerous cultures. For this paper he received the MAA Lester R. Ford Award.
The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive is a website maintained by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson and hosted by the University of St Andrews in Scotland. It contains detailed biographies on many historical and contemporary mathematicians, as well as information on famous curves and various topics in the history of mathematics.
A mathemagician is a mathematician who is also a magician. The term "mathemagic" is believed to have been introduced by Royal Vale Heath with his 1933 book "Mathemagic".
Peter Mann Winkler is a research mathematician, author of more than 125 research papers in mathematics and patent holder in a broad range of applications, ranging from cryptography to marine navigation. His research areas include discrete mathematics, theory of computation and probability theory. He is currently a professor of mathematics and computer science at Dartmouth College.
Edmund Frederick Robertson is British mathematicisn who is a professor emeritus of pure mathematics at the University of St Andrews.
Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G) is an educational foundation and non-profit corporation devoted to preserving the legacy and spirit of prolific writer Martin Gardner. G4G organizes conferences where people who have been inspired by or have a strong personal connection to Martin Gardner can meet and celebrate his influence. These events explore ideas and developments in recreational mathematics, magic, illusion, puzzles, philosophy, and rationality, and foster creative work in all of these areas by enthusiasts of all ages. G4G also facilitates a related series of events called Celebration of Mind (CoM).
Doris J. Schattschneider is an American mathematician, a retired professor of mathematics at Moravian College. She is known for writing about tessellations and about the art of M. C. Escher, for helping Martin Gardner validate and popularize the pentagon tiling discoveries of amateur mathematician Marjorie Rice, and for co-directing with Eugene Klotz the project that developed The Geometer's Sketchpad.
Chaim Goodman-Strauss is an American mathematician who works in convex geometry, especially aperiodic tiling. He retired from the faculty of the University of Arkansas and currently serves as outreach mathematician for the National Museum of Mathematics. He is co-author with John H. Conway and Heidi Burgiel of The Symmetries of Things, a comprehensive book surveying the mathematical theory of patterns.
Jennifer McLoud-Mann is an American mathematician known for her 2015 discovery, with Casey Mann and undergraduate student David Von Derau, of the 15th and last class of convex pentagons to tile the plane. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Washington Bothell, where she is currently the Vice Dean of Curriculum & Instruction of the School of STEM. Beyond tiling, her research interests include knot theory and combinatorics.
Gary Antonick is an American journalist and recreational mathematician who for many years wrote a puzzle-based column called "Numberplay" for the New York Times.
Casey Mann is an American mathematician, specializing in discrete and computational geometry, in particular tessellation and knot theory. He is Professor of Mathematics at University of Washington Bothell, and received the PhD at the University of Arkansas in 2001.
Maths Week Ireland (MWI) is an annual all-island mathematics outreach initiative which takes place throughout Ireland each October. It was founded in 2006 by Waterford Institute of Technology staff members Eoin Gill and Sheila Donegan, and is a project of that institution's STEM outreach Centre for the Advancement of Learning of Maths, Science and Technology (CALMAST). Gill and Donegan continue to direct and run MWI.
Dana S. Richards is a writer, mathematics popularizer and Associate Professor in Computer Science at George Mason University.
Thomas Malin Rodgers was an Atlanta-based businessman and puzzle collector who is remembered as the originator of the Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G) educational foundation, first conceived in 1992. He co-founded G4G with magician and toy inventor Mark Setteducati and UC Berkeley professor Elwyn Berlekamp. Over the past three decades it hosted 14 biennial conferences for aficionados of the recreational mathematician and Scientific American columnist and writer Martin Gardner. Rodgers also edited 6 volumes of Martin Gardner tribute books, published by AK Peters. Rodgers' personal physical puzzle collection was legendary.
Neil J. Calkin is a professor at Clemson University in the Algebra and Discrete Mathematics group of the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. His interests are in combinatorial and probabilistic methods, mainly as applied to number theory.
