Some St. Patrick’s Day math
At today’s Gathering 4 Gardner social, Colm Mulcahy presented on two Irish figures in recreational mathematics with whom Martin Gardner corresponded: Victor Meally and Owen O’Shea. Owen O’Shea is the natural successor to Gardner’s “Professor I.J. Matrix” as a prolific generator of numerological coincidences — see for example The Magic Numbers of the Professor (2007). Victor Meally shows up occasionally in Gardner’s Mathematical Games columns, and also in “Problem 3.14” (appropriate for Pi Day!) in The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems (2006):