“The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.”

—  Martin Gardner

From a book review in The New York Times (9 May 1976) http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40F13FC345E157493CBA9178ED85F428785F9#, also quoted in The American Mathematical Monthly (December 1994)
Context: Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals — the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.

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Martin Gardner 16
recreational mathematician and philosopher 1914–2010

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