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A. K. Dewdney

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Alexander Keewatin Dewdney (born August 5, 1941 in London, Ontario) is a Canadian mathematician, computer scientist, author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. Dewdney is the son of Canadian artist and author Selwyn Dewdney, and brother of poet Christopher Dewdney.

Art and fiction

In his student days, Dewdney made a number of influential experimental films, including Malanga, on the poet Gerald Malanga, Four Girls, Scissors, and his most ambitious film, the pre-structural Maltese Cross Movement.[1][2] Margaret Atwood wrote that a poetry scrapbook by Dewdney, based on the Maltese Cross Movement film, "raises scrapbooking to an art".[3]

The Academy Film Archive preserved The Maltese Cross Movement and Wildwood Flower.[4]

He has also written two novels, The Planiverse (about an imaginary two-dimensional world)[5] and Hungry Hollow: The Story of a Natural Place. Dewdney lives in London, Ontario, Canada where he holds the position of Professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario.[6]

Computing, mathematics, and science

Dewdney has written a number of books on mathematics, computing, and bad science.

Dewdney followed Martin Gardner and Douglas Hofstadter in authoring Scientific American magazine's recreational mathematics column, renamed to "Computer Recreations", then "Mathematical Recreations", from 1984 to 1991. He has published more than 10 books on scientific possibilities and puzzles.[7] Dewdney was a co-inventor of programming game Core War.[8]

Since the nineties, Dewdney has worked on biology, both as a field ecologist[9] and as a mathematical biologist,[10] contributing a solution to the problem of determining the underlying dynamics of species abundance in natural communities.

Conspiracy theories

Dewdney is a member of the 9/11 Truth movement, and has theorized that the planes used September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks had been emptied of passengers and were flown by remote control.[11] He based these claims in part on a series of experiments (one with funding from Japan's TV Asahi) that, he claims, show that cell phones do not work on airplanes, from which he concludes that the phone calls received from hijacked passengers during the attacks must have been faked.

Works

  • The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World (1984). ISBN 0-387-98916-1.
  • The Armchair Universe: An Exploration of Computer Worlds (1988). ISBN 0-7167-1939-8. (collection of "Mathematical Recreations" columns)
  • The Magic Machine: A Handbook of Computer Sorcery (1990). ISBN 0-7167-2144-9. (collection of "Mathematical Recreations" columns)
  • The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science (1993). ISBN 0-8050-7166-0.
  • The Tinkertoy Computer and Other Machinations (1993). ISBN 0-7167-2491-X. (collection of "Mathematical Recreations" columns)
  • Introductory Computer Science: Bits of Theory, Bytes of Practice (1996). ISBN 0-7167-8286-3.
  • 200% of Nothing: An Eye Opening Tour Through the Twists and Turns of Math Abuse and Innumeracy (1996). ISBN 0-471-14574-2.
  • Yes, We Have No Neutrons: An Eye-Opening Tour through the Twists and Turns of Bad Science (1997). ISBN 0-471-29586-8.
  • Hungry Hollow: The Story of a Natural Place (1998). ISBN 0-387-98415-1.
  • A Mathematical Mystery Tour: Discovering the Truth and Beauty of the Cosmos (2001). ISBN 0-471-40734-8.
  • Beyond Reason: Eight Great Problems that Reveal the Limits of Science (2004). ISBN 0-471-01398-6.

References

  1. ^ Description of Malanga, Four Girls, and Scissors, Film-Makers Coop, retrieved 2013-09-16.
  2. ^ Wildwood Flower, directed by Dewdney in 1971, at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, March 2013.
  3. ^ Atwood, Margaret (2011) [1966], "Some old, some new, some boring, some blew, and some picture books", Second Words: Selected Critical Prose 1960-1982, House of Anansi, p. 66, ISBN 9781770890107.
  4. ^ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
  5. ^ |last=Stewart |first=P.J. |authorlink=Philip Stewart |article=Allegory through the computing class: Sufism in The Planiverse by A. K. Dewdney |journal=Sufi |issue=9 |date=spring 1991 |pages=26-30
  6. ^ A. K. Dewdney website.
  7. ^ "Books and articles", A. K. Dewdney website.
  8. ^ "Core War guidelines". Department of Computer Science, The University of Western Ontario. March 1984. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  9. ^ Newport Forest, Closed Conservation Area.
  10. ^ "The Shape of Biodiversity; Recent research & publications", A. K. Dewdney website.
  11. ^ Atkins, Stephen E. (2011), The 9/11 Encyclopedia: Second Edition, ABC-CLIO, p. 125, ISBN 9781598849219.
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