Gardner set a new high standard for writing about mathematics. In a 2004 interview he said, "I go up to calculus, and beyond that I don't understand any of the papers that are being written. I consider that that was an advantage for the type of column I was doing because I had to understand what I was writing about, and that enabled me to write in such a way that an average reader could understand what I was saying. If you are writing popularly about math, I think it's good not to know too much math." And he was fearsomely bright. John Horton Conway called him "the most learned man I have ever met." Colm Mulcahy spoke for many when he said, "Gardner was without doubt the best friend mathematics ever had."