Martin Gardner died on Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 at the age of 95.
He was a prolific science and math writer as well as a magician and debunker of the paranormal.
While creation science had already been confronted in scientific and university publications, Gardner was the first to do so in a book that was intended for the general public. In his groundbreaking Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957, Dover Publications, New York), he describes The New Geology, published by George McCready Price in 1923:
It is a classic of pseudo-science. So carefully reasoned are Price’s speculations, so bolstered with impressive geological erudition, that thousands of Protestant fundamentalists today accept his work as the final word on the subject. Even the skeptical reader will find Price difficult to answer without considerable background in geology. (Gardner, 1957, pp. 127-28)
Though Gardner was not an atheist (he was a philosophical theist or deist), he was a trailblazer for later pseudo-science debunkers such as James Randi as well as popular science advocates like Carl Sagan.
The world was left a better place for his being here. James Randi wrote a touching tribute to his friend on the JREF blog. The National Center for Science Education did a nice write-up on him as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner
