There is a group of people who lie at the intersection of mathematics, philosophy, magic, and scientific skepticism who all knew and worked with Martin Gardner. They are united by a striking originality in their work and they sometimes owe much of their fame to being featured by Gardner in his column. The fact that Gardner had an unerring eye for spotting and promoting such people is one of the reasons his column was so influential. Indeed, Gardner filled a role a little bit like the 17th century French polymath Marin Mersenne in that he maintained this network and made these people aware of each other–and this led to further fruitful collaborations. For example, if it were not for Gardner, mathematicians Conway, Berlekamp, and Guy probably would have never gotten together to write "Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays", a foundational book in combinatorial game theory. Gardner also introduced Conway to Benoit Mandelbrot because he knew they both were interested in Penrose tiles. If it were not for Gardner, Doris Schattschneider and Marjorie Rice would not have gotten together to document the newly discovered pentagon tilings.