Alexander Dewdney

Who is Alexander Dewdney?

Alexander Keewatin Dewdney is a Canadian mathematician, computer scientist and author who has written a number of books on mathematics, computing, and bad science. He has also written two novels, The Planiverse 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. Dewdney is the son of Canadian artist and author Selwyn Dewdney, and brother of poet Christopher Dewdney.

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.

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. Dewdney was a co-inventor of programming game Core War.