Martin Demaine

Who is Martin Demaine?

Martin L. Demaine is an artist and mathematician, the Angelika and Barton Weller artist in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Demaine attended Medford High School in Medford, Massachusetts. After studying glassblowing in England, he began his artistic career by blowing art glass in New Brunswick in the early 1970s. The Demaine Studio, located in Miramichi Bay and later at Opus Village in Mactaquac, was the first one-man glass studio in Canada, part of the international studio glass movement. Demaine's pieces from this period are represented in the permanent collections of half a dozen major museums including the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the National Gallery of Canada. Since joining MIT, Demaine has begun blowing glass again, as an instructor at the MIT Glass Lab; his newer work features innovative glassblowing techniques intended as a puzzle to his fellow glassblowers.

Martin Demaine is the father of MIT Computer Science professor and MacArthur Fellow Erik Demaine; in 1987 they together founded the Erik and Dad Puzzle Company which distributed puzzles throughout Canada.