Royal Vale Heath (5 January 1883 – 25 July 1960) was a wealthy New York stockbroker and writer who became widely known as a magician and puzzle enthusiast.
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
, July 27, 1960[Royal Vale Heath]
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His magic tricks were often based on mathematics and he introduced the term "
mathemagic" to describe them in a 1933 book titled ''Mathemagic''.
["Mathemagic" by Royal Vale Heath and Jerome Sydney Meyer, Simon and Schuster, New York (1933)] He was a frequent contributor to ''
Scripta Mathematica
''Scripta Mathematica'' was a quarterly journal published by Yeshiva University devoted to the philosophy, history, and expository treatment of mathematics. It was said to be, at its time, "the only mathematical magazine in the world edited by spe ...
'',
[ '' Hugard's Magic Monthly'', and '' The Jinx''.][Royal Vale Heath]
Conjuring Archive: Searchable Magic Book Contents
He specialized in tricks involving dice, serial numbers and magic square
In recreational mathematics, a square array of numbers, usually positive integers, is called a magic square if the sums of the numbers in each row, each column, and both main diagonals are the same. The 'order' of the magic square is the number ...
s.[Special Exhibits]
Notices of the American Mathematical Society
''Notices of the American Mathematical Society'' is the membership journal of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), published monthly except for the combined June/July issue. The first volume appeared in 1953. Each issue of the magazine since ...
, July/August 1988, Volume 35, Number 6, p 840 He once constructed a magic square that remained a magic square even when it was turned upside-down.
In 1988 his work was exhibited at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
.[
Heath played a crucial role in the career of popular mathematics writer ]Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lewis ...
. At a magic show in 1956 he introduced Gardner to flexagon
In geometry, flexagons are flat models, usually constructed by folding strips of paper, that can be ''flexed'' or folded in certain ways to reveal faces besides the two that were originally on the back and front.
Flexagons are usually square or ...
s and these folded paper shapes became the subject of Gardner's December 1956 column in Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
which launched his quarter century tenure there. Several of Heath's tricks have been collected in Gardner book ''Mathematics, Magic and Mystery''.[''Gardner, Martin ]
Mathematics, Magic and Mystery
' Dover (1956), ''
References
Recreational mathematicians
American magicians
Writers from New York City
Mathematics popularizers
1883 births
1960 deaths
{{US-mathematician-stub