John Conway

Updated: 04/30/2020 by Computer Hope
John Conway

Name: John Horton Conway

Born: December 26, 1937, Liverpool, England

Death: April 11, 2020 (Age: 82)

Computer-related contributions

  • British mathematician, noted for his contributions to number theory, game theory, knot theory, and combinatorics.
  • Gained widespread fame for his contributions to recreational mathematics, notably Conway's Game of Life.
  • His Erdős number is 1.

Honors and awards

  • Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition, American Mathematical Society (2000).
  • John von Neumann Professor Emeritus at Princeton University (1987).
  • Pólya Prize, London Mathematical Society (1987).
  • FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society of London) (1981).
  • Berwick Prize, London Mathematical Society (1971).

Notable publications

  • The Symmetries of Things (with Heidi Burgiel and Chaim Goodman-Strauss) (2008).
  • The Book of Numbers (with Richard K. Guy) (1996).
  • Sphere Packings, Lattices, and Groups (with Neil Sloane) (1995).
  • Atlas of Finite Groups (with Robert Turner Curtis, Simon Phillips Norton, Richard A. Parker, and Robert Arnott Wilson) (1985).
  • On the Distribution of Values of Angles Determined by Colinear Points (with Paul Erdős, Michael Guy, and H. T. Croft) (1979).
  • On Numbers and Games (1976).
  • Regular Algebra and Finite Machines (1971).

Quotes

"You get surreal numbers by playing games. I used to feel guilty in Cambridge that I spent all day playing games, while I was supposed to be doing mathematics. Then, when I discovered surreal numbers, I realized that playing games is math." (1999)

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