Martin Gardner, who died on May 22, 2010, shared the beauty, mystery, and most of all, the fun of mathematics with the world. I remember watching the episode of “The Nature of Things” linked below, captivated by the reach of mathematics and the passion and ingenuity of these mathematicians–mathematicians who loved magic, juggling, computer games, and debunking con-artists.
The passion of Martin Gardner reached many people; there’s no denying the impact this television show had on me.
David Blackwell was a highly-regarded statistician and mathematician who taught at UC Berkeley for 30 years. Apparently he was the kind of mathematician who could become interested in a new topic, learn about it, and then quickly produce profound results. Then he’d move on. Blackwell died on July 8th: his obituary in the NYT can be found here.
Among other things, Blackwell was a strong proponent of the Bayesian approach to statistical inference, and he produced results in Game Theory regarding bluffing and dueling.