Richard Garfield Ph.D

Richard Grafield is the game designer who created card games like Magic : The Gathering, Netrunner, BattleTech, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and board games like RoboRally. Magic: The Gathering is his most successful game and is credited with developing the collectible card game or trading card game genre.

He has a bachelor of science degree in computer mathematics. He also has a Ph.D in combinatorial mathematics from University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He has taught as a professor of mathematics at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Richard Garfield later left academics to join Wizards of the Coast as a full-time game designer in June 1994.

What i can say about him? He's one of the few game designers that i looked up to. His games are really good and its interesting to see how the mechanics of the games works. His ideas always fresh and innovative, he was able to apply his knowledge of mathematics in his games. For example, many might have not notice this but Magic: The Gathering requires you to think and calculate a lot during its gameplay. Either its to count the resources needed to play certain cards, or how much damage can be dealed in a turn if you play certain cards in certain combinations (remember Fireball? everytime I play that I need to take my time and think, if I want to pay the extra cost to deal the damage evenly to the creatures and/or player).

Richard Garfield's Biography in Wikipedia
Richard Garfield's Biography

Check out Richard Garfield's top 5 games and their reviews
Top 5 Richard Garfield Game

An interview with Richard Garfield by Starcitygames.com
Interview

Lastly, a card of Legendary status:

psst, its Richard Garfield, Ph.D from the Unhinged set(MTG)

Jya Ne