The Incredible Dr. Matrix (U)

Dust jacket notes: "About once a year, since 1957 when Martin Gardner began his popular Mathematical Games column in Scientific American, he has visited and interviewed a mysterious numerologist who calls himself Dr. Irving Joshua Matrix. (The six letters of each name have led to his identification with 666, the number of the Beast in Biblical prophecy.) Dr. Matrix is the world's leading authority on number and language curiosities, especially coincidences of the sort that Jung called 'synchronicity.' For example: the computer that goes mad in the motion picture 2001 is called HAL. Shift each letter forward one step in the alphabet and you get IBM. Dr. Matrix is the author of a notorious letter on the astonishing number of and letter coincidences related to the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy. He was the first to recognize the coincidences on the famous Kennedy dollar bill, now prized by collectors. Martin Gardner brings together in this book for the first time all of his Dr. Matrix columns, from his initial meeting with Dr. Matrix in Manhattan to his detailed review in 1975 of Dr. Matrix's fantastic 13-volume commentary on the King James Bible. You will learn how Dr. Matrix predicted the outcome of a presidential election, the existence of the solar system's 32nd moon, even the millionth digit of pi long before a computer program proved it to be 5. You will meet Iva, Dr. Matrix's gorgeous and sexy Eurasian secretary with whom Gardner has been friendly for more than a decade. Along the way you will master a great deal of significant combinatorial mathematics and umber theory. The chapters are crammed with remarkable puzzles, all of which are clearly answered in the back of the book, together with commentary and references that Gardner has supplied especially for this book."