Irving Joshua Matrix — previously known as Irving Joshua Bush and commonly known as Dr. (I. J.) Matrix — is a fictitious

polymath A polymath or polyhistor is an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Polymaths often prefer a specific context in which to explain their knowledge, ...

scientist, scholar, cowboy, and entrepreneur who made extraordinary contributions to

perpetual motion Perpetual motion is the motion of bodies that continues forever in an unperturbed system. A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical machine that can do work indefinitely without an external energy source. This kind of machine is impossible ...

engineering, Biblical cryptography and

numerology Numerology (known before the 20th century as arithmancy) is the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. It is also the study of the numerical value, via an alphanumeric system, ...

, pyramid power,

pentagonal In geometry, a pentagon () is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simple or self-intersecting. A self-intersecting ''regular pentagon'' (or ''star pentagon'') is cal ...

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state, while not judging the meditat ...

extra-sensory perception Extrasensory perception (ESP), also known as a sixth sense, or cryptaesthesia, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was ado ...

, psychic metallurgy, and a number of other topics. He is an accomplished

prestidigitator Sleight of hand (also known as prestidigitation or ''legerdemain'' () comprises fine motor skills used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate. It is closely associated with close-up magic, card magic, card fl ...

and a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. Being a fictitious character he could perform tasks that were logically impossible; for example, he could "clap one hand in the air" when summoning a waiter or a minion.The Magic Numbers Of Dr. Matrix
by Martin Gardner, Prometheus Books, 1985, Dr. Matrix was the satirical creation of ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...

'' columnist

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writin ...

(1914–2010) who introduced him in his "

Mathematical Games A mathematical game is a game whose rules, strategies, and outcomes are defined by clear mathematics, mathematical parameters. Often, such games have simple rules and match procedures, such as tic-tac-toe and dots and boxes. Generally, mathemati ...

" column in January 1960. The mythical doctor appeared frequently thereafter and the relevant columns were eventually collected into a book. The intent was partly to provide colorful context to mathematical puzzles and curiosities, partly to spoof various pseudo-scientific theories, and to provide a humorous introduction to the serious topic at hand.

Fictitious biography

Matrix was born in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, the eldest of seven children of the Reverend William Miller Bush, a

Seventh-day Adventist The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbat ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

. He resided in Japan until the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, where he learned the secrets of the conjuring art and worked as assistant to the famous Japanese magician

Tenkai was an influential Japanese Tendai Buddhist monk of the Azuchi-Momoyama and early Edo periods. He achieved the rank of ''Daisōjō'', the highest rank of the Tendai priesthood and was an influential advisor to various Shoguns, including To ...

. Presumably it was in Japan that he met Ms. Eisei Toshiyori, and where their daughter Iva Matrix was born on December 31, 1939. Iva accompanied Dr. Matrix through most of his public life, acting as assistant and manager in most of his enterprises. The author of the fictitious narrative pretended to be romantically interested in Iva, thus explaining his continuing interest in Dr. Matrix's activities. He was a close friend and a student of

Nicolas Bourbaki Nicolas Bourbaki () is the collective pseudonym of a group of mathematicians, predominantly French alumni of the École normale supérieure (Paris), École normale supérieure (ENS). Founded in 1934–1935, the Bourbaki group originally intende ...

. Martin Gardner tells of meeting the shady Dr. Matrix at Pyramid Lake, Nevada. He was accompanied by a Filipino assistant named Rhee, who was missing most of his teeth. They called him "One-Tooth Rhee." Both were chased out of town for running a

pyramid scheme A pyramid scheme is a business model which, rather than earning money (or providing Return on investment, returns on investments) by sale of legitimate product (business), products to an end consumer, mainly earns money by recruiting new members ...

. Dr. Matrix was often persecuted by establishment authorities, and many times had to change abode and live under assumed names, with appropriate matching changed appearances. He was accused several times of fraud. He reportedly died in 1980, in a duel against a certain Ivan Skavinsky Skavar, a

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

agent, in circumstances as obscure and dubious as most of his career. However, in 1987 Gardner encountered Matrix, alive and well, in

Casablanca Casablanca (, ) is the largest city in Morocco and the country's economic and business centre. Located on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Chaouia (Morocco), Chaouia plain in the central-western part of Morocco, the city has a populatio ...

at "

Rick's Café Américain ''Casablanca'' is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate (Bogart) who must choos ...

" of all places. It was explained that Ivan's bullet merely grazed him, but in order to avoid retaliation by the KGB, witnesses were bribed to state that he died, and a fake funeral was arranged.Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers: –and the Return of Dr Matrix
by Martin Gardner, Mathematical Association of America, Washington, DC, 1997, pp. 294-314,

Dr. Matrix columns

Martin Gardner chronicled the story of Dr. Matrix in the following

Mathematical Games column Over a period of 24 years (January 1957 – December 1980), Martin Gardner wrote 288 consecutive monthly "Mathematical Games" columns for ''Scientific American'' magazine. During the next years, until June 1986, Gardner wrote 9 more columns, br ...

Legacy

A web site, ''Ask Dr. Matrix'' exists which finds a numerological link between two user chosen numbers. Irish mathematical enthusiast and author Owen O’Shea has been dubbed by the New York Times as "the heir apparent to Dr. I. J. Matrix in numerological acumen”.

Bibliography

Gardner's Dr. Matrix book went through three editions.The Canon: The fifteen "Mathematical Games" books at martin-gardner.org
/ref> The complete list is: * ''The Numerology of Dr. Matrix: The Fabulous Feats and Adventures in Number Theory, Sleight of Word, and Numerological Analysis (Literary, Biblical, Political, Philosophical and Psychonumeranalytical) of That Incredible Master Mind'' (1967),

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...

. * Reprinted/expanded as ''The Incredible Dr. Matrix: The World's Greatest Numerologist' (1976),

Charles Scribner's Sons Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City that has published several notable American authors, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjori ...

; . * Reprinted/expanded as ''The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix'' (1985);

Prometheus Books Prometheus Books is a publishing company founded in August 1969 by the philosopher Paul Kurtz (who was also the founder of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). The publ ...

; Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 84-43183, (cloth), 0-87975-282-3 (paper). All of the Dr. Matrix columns from 1960 to 1980 are collected in the third, and final, edition. One final story about Dr. Matrix appears in Gardner's book: * ''Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers: –and the Return of Dr Matrix'', Mathematical Association of America, Washington, DC, 1997

References

External links

Ask Dr. Matrix
An on-line cybernetic numerologist inspired by Dr. Matrix {{Martin Gardner Matrix, Irving Joshua Fictional cowboys and cowgirls Fictional engineers Matrix, Irving Joshua Fictional parapsychologists Fictional scholars Fictional stage magicians *