Mission Statement
The Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G) Foundation stimulates curiosity and the playful exchange of ideas and critical thinking in recreational math, magic, science, literature, and puzzles to preserve and extend the legacy of writer and polymath Martin Gardner.
G4G is an educational foundation and non-profit corporation (Gathering 4 Gardner, Inc.). It is comprised of a community of people who share Martin Gardner’s interests and was founded by Tom Rodgers, a Gardner fan and puzzle collector. Gardner is celebrated and honored for popularizing recreational mathematics, bringing delightful, magical, and wondrous mathematics to laymen and mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.
Meet the Board of Directors
Celebrating Gardner’s Legacy
For 25 years Gardner wrote a column for Scientific American that featured his mathematical games. It quickly became the most popular feature of the magazine and inspired many to become mathematicians and physicists and led others to a new acceptance and fondness for math, puzzles, games and magic.“WARNING: Martin Gardner has turned dozens of innocent youngsters into math professors and thousands of math professors into innocent youngsters.” — Persi Diaconis on the back cover of Gardner’s book, The Colossal Book of MathematicsThe spirit of what Gardner started through his columns and books continues through this foundation and its conferences and workshops designed to celebrate his legacy and passions. Gardner wished to inspire new generations to explore connections between math and the world—math and science, math and art, math and magic. He was forever finding ways to evoke a curiosity and a desire in others to play with math, make it a puzzle or a game and turn it into something magical. The G4G Foundation strives to do the same by encouraging gatherings of the most passionate “mathemagicians” around the world.
“[Gathering 4 Gardner] brings together incredible people, to give them a forum to meet, to communicate, and to interact with amazing individuals from different disciplines, to form connections, and to inspire.” — Neil Calkin after the passing of Tom Rodgers, founder of G4G