The Spectacular Persi Diaconis

One of the most famous examples of a magician and world-renowned mathematician is Prof. Diaconis at Stanford University.

At the age of 14 he ran away from home to work under the magician, Dai Vernon. Fast forward a few years, he was admitted to Harvard University’s graduate statistics program on the strength of a recommendation letter from the famed mathematics writer Martin Gardner who was impressed with his card tricks.

Now a professor of mathematics and statistics at Stanford University, Professor Diaconis has employed his intuition about cards in a wide range of situations. Once, for example, he helped decode messages passed between inmates at a California state prison by using small random “shuffles” to gradually improve a decryption key. He has also analyzed Bose-Einstein condensation — in which a collection of ultra-cold atoms coalesces into a single big atom — by imagining the atoms as rows of cards moving around. It seems he has made original creative paintings in the canvas of mathematics pursuing his passion for magic!