Irving Joshua Matrix (born Japan, 1908; died Black Sea 1980), born Irving Joshua Bush and commonly known as Dr. (I. J.) Matrix, was a fictitious polymath scientist, scholar, and entrepreneur who made extraordinary contributions to perpetual motion engineering, Biblical cryptography and numerology, pyramid power, pentagonal meditation, extra-sensory perception, psychic metallurgy, and a number of other topics. He was an accomplished prestidigitator and an intuitive mathematician, two qualities which he put to good use in most of his enterprises.

Dr. Matrix was a creation of mathematical columnist Martin Gardner, who reported some of his doings in the Mathematical Games column of Scientific American (starting in 1959) — partly to provide colorful context to mathematical puzzles and curiosities, partly as a satire of various pseudo-scientific theories.

Biography

Little is known about Dr. Matrix's early life. He was born in Japan, the eldest of seven children of the Reverend William Miller Bush, a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary. He resided in Japan till the end of the second world war, where he learned

Presumably it was in Japan that he met Ms. Eisei Toshiyori, and where their daughter Iva Matrix was born. Iva accompanied Dr. Matrix through most of his public life, acting as assistant and manager in most of his enterprises. Martin Gardner's undisguised (if scantily corresponded) affection for Iva may explain his continuing interest in Dr. Matrix's activities.

Dr. Matrix was often persecuted by establishment authorities, and many times had to change abode and live under assumed names. He was accused several times of fraud, although those crimes are now believed to be wholly imaginary. He reportedly died in a duel against a certain Ivan Skavinsky Skavar, in circumstances as obscure and dubious as most of his career.

References

• The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix By Martin Gardner. Prometheus Books. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 84-43183, ISBN 0-87975-281-5 (cloth), 0-87975-282-3 (paper)