MYSTERIES OF THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE - HIKARI Ltd

Biographical Vignettes 181
Pioneer Award, the National Medal of Science, the Steele Prize, the Franklin
Medal, the Adelskold Medal, the John von Neumann Medal, the Kyoto Prize,
the Harvey Prize and the Katayanagi Prize. He is a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Science and a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, Académie des Sciences, the
Royal Society of London and the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as an
Honorary Member of the IEEE. In 1990, he gave up his e-mail address so that
he might concentrate more fully on his work and, since 2006, he has waged a
(thus far) successful battle against prostate cancer.
Vignette 43 (Samuel Loyd, Sr.: 1841-1911).
Sam Loyd has been described by Martin Gardner as “America’s greatest
puzzlist and an authentic American genius” [119]. His most famous work is
Cyclopedia of Puzzles (1914) [210] which was published posthumously by his
son. The more mathematical puzzles from this magnum opus were selected
and edited by Martin Gardner [211, 212]. He was born in Philadelphia and
raised in Brooklyn, New York. Rather than attending college, he supported
himself by composing and publishing chess problems. At age 16, he became
problem editor of Chess Monthly and later wrote a weekly chess page for Scientific
American Supplement. (Many of his contributions appeared under such
monikers as W. King, A. Knight and W. K. Bishop.) Most of these columns
were collected in his book Chess Strategy (1878). In 1987, he was inducted
into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame for his chess compositions. After 1870, the
focus of his work shifted toward mathematical puzzles, some of which were
published in newspapers and magazines while others were manufactured and
marketed. His Greek Symbol Puzzle is considered in Recreation 1 of Chapter
4. He died at his home on Halsey Street in Brooklyn, aged 70.
Vignette 44 (Henry Ernest Dudeney: 1857-1930).
Henry Ernest Dudeney has been described by Martin Gardner as “England’s
greatest inventor of puzzles; indeed, he may well have been the greatest
puzzlist who ever lived” [120]. His most famous works are The Canterbury
Puzzles (1907) [85], Amusements in Mathematics (1917) [86], Modern Puzzles
(1926) and Puzzles and Curious Problems (1931). The last two were combined
and edited by Martin Gardner [87]. He was born in the English village
of Mayfield, East Sussex and, like Loyd, entered a life of puzzling through a
fascination with chess problems. His lifelong involvement with puzzles (often
published in newspapers and magazines under the pseudonym of “Sphinx”)
was done against the backdrop of a career in the Civil Service. For twenty
years, he wrote the successful column “Perplexities” in The Strand magazine
(of Sherlock Holmes fame!). For a time, he engaged in an active correspondence
with Loyd (they even collaborated on a series of articles without ever