Puneet Varma (Editor)

Mathemagician

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A mathemagician is a mathematician who is also a magician.

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The name "mathemagician" was probably first applied to Martin Gardner, but has since been used to describe many mathematician/magicians, including Arthur T. Benjamin, Persi Diaconis, Colm Mulcahy, and Shona Jean McKay. Diaconis has suggested that the reason so many mathematicians are magicians is that "inventing a magic trick and inventing a theorem are very similar activities."

A great number of self-working mentalism tricks rely on mathematical principles. Max Maven often utilizes this type of magic in his performance.

Notable mathemagicians

  • Alan Turing
  • Ronald Graham
  • Persi Diaconis
  • Karl Fulves
  • Arthur T. Benjamin
  • John Wildrick, Department of Mathematics, West Chester University
  • Martin Gardner
  • Mike Byster
  • Raymond Smullyan
  • Louise Robert M. Segura
  • Karagiannakis Dimitrios, Ph.D., Department of Informatics Engineering, TEI Crete
  • Manoj Kumar Dhavala
  • There is a character named "the Mathemagician" in the 1961 book The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. This character is king of a magical realm of numbers. His brother and arch-enemy is king of the realm of words.
  • In the Simpsons episode "Grade School Confidential", a "Mathemagician" performs mathematical tricks at Martin Prince's birthday party. He is exposed by Lisa Simpson as doing at least one trick by "cheating".

    • References

    Mathemagician Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA