A. K. Dewdney [1941-] ('Kee' to his friends) is a mathematician, most famous for having written a column for ScientificAmerican called ComputerRecreations, now collected in several volumes.
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/akd/
He's done other books, including ThePlaniverse and ArmchairUniverse, and edited a newsletter called Algorithm.
He invented CoreWars.
He also wrote ThePlaniverse, currently my favorite book. It's inspired me to look into his other books, so I've ordered ArmchairUniverse from amazon.com.
-- NickBensema