The world darkens: Martin Gardner is no more

Martin Gardner has died. Author of many books on topics as varied as non-Euclidean geometry and Alice in Wonderland, Gardner may be best-known for his 35-year(!) tenure as columnist at Scientific American.

To me, he's the writer of Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, a brilliant book which helped create the modern skeptical movement. I certainly liked a great many of his other works, but Fads and Fallacies changed not just my life, but many lives.

In Sagan's metaphor, science is a candle in the dark. With the end of Martin Gardner's life, the darkness curls closer to us all, as the candle dims. It's up to all of us to burn a bit brighter in his memory, to hold it at bay.