Martin David Kruskal, a mathematician whose work on the properties of an unusual kind of waves helped pave the way for fiber optic technology, on December 26 at 81. Kruskal died in Princeton, where he spent 38 years on the university faculty before moving to Rutgers University in 1989.

Kruskal’s best-known advance came in the 1960s when he was able to use equations to explain solitons, waves that pass through each other without deformations. Light transmitted over fiber optic cables for communication purposes has the same properties.

He first came to Princeton in 1951 to work on a then-classified project to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion..

Kruskal’s scholarship dealt largely with problems related to natural phenomena, but he was also interested in other areas of math. At the end of his life, he was working with what scholars call surreal numbers, for instance “1” followed by an infinite number of zeros.

For his work on solitons and other issues in math – including using the Theory of General Relativity to help explain black holes, Kruskal was given a National Medal of Science in 1996.

Another of his legacies, which better known among magicians than mathematicians, is the Kruskal Count, a card trick used in mindreading acts.