Raymond M. Smullyan

Raymond Smullyan, born 1919 in Far Rockaway, New York, is a mathematician, concert pianist, magician, and author of numerous books of logic puzzles, chess puzzles, mathematics, philosophy and memoir. His startlingly brilliant and original puzzle books, of a genre largely invented by him, are both delightfully approachable and devilishly challenging, leading the reader by degrees from elementary puzzles to deep results in mathematical logic. His soulful piano playing of works by Bach, Schubert and Scarlatti, among others, are on a high artistic and spiritual level. As a person as well as a creator, he is sui generis; part Taoist sage, part bon vivant, he is a natural born entertainer who finds an audience to charm wherever he goes, performing magic tricks, telling jokes, spreading wisdom and good cheer, and inspiring more often than not the comment “You’ve made my day!” He lives in the Catskill Mountains.