John Conway has died of COVID-19

[Sauron]

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COVID-19 has claimed the life of Princeton mathematician John Conway. He was 82 years old.

The British-born Conway spent the early part of his career at Cambridge before moving to Princeton University in the 1980s. He made contributions in various areas of mathematics but is best known for his invention of Conway's Game of Life, a cellular automaton in which simple rules give rise to surprisingly complex behaviors. It was made famous by a 1970 Scientific American article and has had a lively community around it ever since then. (Don't confuse it with Milton Bradley's board game of the same name.)

 

There isn't much to say here about the event itself. John Conway has been a brilliant mathematician and his contributions have been invaluable to both mathematics and computer science. He is most famous for the "game of life" as the article says but his most scientifically important works are often understated.

 

Here are a couple of Numberphile videos where he appeared to talk about his achievements and his relationship with the fame he received for inventing the "game of life":

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