John Horton Conway
John Horton Conway PhD ) | |
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Known for | |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | University of Cambridge Princeton University |
Thesis | Homogeneous ordered sets (1964) |
Doctoral advisor | Harold Davenport[1] |
Doctoral students | |
Website | Archived version @ web.archive.org |
John Horton Conway FRS (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life.
Born and raised in Liverpool, Conway spent the first half of his career at the University of Cambridge before moving to the United States, where he held the John von Neumann Professorship at Princeton University for the rest of his career.[2] On 11 April 2020, at age 82, he died of complications from COVID-19.[3]
Early life and education
Conway was born on 26 December 1937 in Liverpool, the son of Cyril Horton Conway and Agnes Boyce.[2][4] He became interested in mathematics at a very early age. By the time he was 11, his ambition was to become a mathematician.[5][6] After leaving sixth form, he studied mathematics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.[4] A "terribly introverted adolescent" in school, he took his admission to Cambridge as an opportunity to transform himself into an extrovert, a change which would later earn him the nickname of "the world's most charismatic mathematician".[7][8]
Conway was awarded a
In 1964, Conway was awarded his doctorate and was appointed as College Fellow and Lecturer in Mathematics at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.[9]
After leaving Cambridge in 1986, he took up the appointment to the John von Neumann Chair of Mathematics at Princeton University.[9] There, he won the school's Pi Day pie-eating contest.[10]
Conway and Martin Gardner
Conway's career was intertwined with that of
Conway was a prominent member of Martin Gardner's Mathematical Grapevine. He regularly visited Gardner and often wrote him long letters summarizing his recreational research. In a 1976 visit, Gardner kept him for a week, pumping him for information on the Penrose tilings which had just been announced. Conway had discovered many (if not most) of the major properties of the tilings.[15] Gardner used these results when he introduced the world to Penrose tiles in his January 1977 column.[16] The cover of that issue of Scientific American features the Penrose tiles and is based on a sketch by Conway.[12]
Personal life and death
Conway was married three times. With his first two wives he had two sons and four daughters. He married Diana in 2001 and had another son with her.[17] He had three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.[2]
On 8 April 2020, Conway developed symptoms of COVID-19.[18] On 11 April, he died in New Brunswick, New Jersey, at the age of 82.[18][19][20][21][22]
Major areas of research
Recreational mathematics
Conway invented the Game of Life, one of the early examples of a
Combinatorial game theory
Conway contributed to
He was also one of the inventors of the game
He invented a new system of numbers, the
Geometry
In the mid-1960s with
In the theory of tessellations, he devised the Conway criterion which is a fast way to identify many prototiles that tile the plane.[32]
He investigated lattices in higher dimensions and was the first to determine the symmetry group of the Leech lattice.
Geometric topology
In knot theory, Conway formulated a new variation of the
Conway's conjecture that, in any thrackle, the number of edges is at most equal to the number of vertices, is still open.
Group theory
He was the primary author of the
Based on a 1978 observation by mathematician
Conway introduced the Mathieu groupoid, an extension of the Mathieu group M12 to 13 points.
Number theory
As a graduate student, he proved one case of a conjecture by Edward Waring, that every integer could be written as the sum of 37 numbers each raised to the fifth power, though Chen Jingrun solved the problem independently before Conway's work could be published.[38] In 1972, Conway proved that a natural generalization of the Collatz problem is algorithmically undecidable. Related to that, he developed the esoteric programming language FRACTRAN. While lecturing on the Collatz conjecture, Terence Tao (who was taught by him in graduate school) mentioned Conway's result and said that he was "always very good at making extremely weird connections in mathematics".[39]
Algebra
Conway wrote a textbook on
Analysis
He invented a
Algorithmics
For calculating the day of the week, he invented the
Theoretical physics
In 2004, Conway and Simon B. Kochen, another Princeton mathematician, proved the free will theorem, a version of the "no hidden variables" principle of quantum mechanics. It states that given certain conditions, if an experimenter can freely decide what quantities to measure in a particular experiment, then elementary particles must be free to choose their spins to make the measurements consistent with physical law. Conway said that "if experimenters have free will, then so do elementary particles."[42]
Awards and honours
Conway received the
His FRS nomination, in 1981, reads:
A versatile mathematician who combines a deep combinatorial insight with algebraic virtuosity, particularly in the construction and manipulation of "off-beat" algebraic structures which illuminate a wide variety of problems in completely unexpected ways. He has made distinguished contributions to the theory of finite groups, to the theory of knots, to mathematical logic (both set theory and automata theory) and to the theory of games (as also to its practice).[44]
In 2017 Conway was given honorary membership of the British Mathematical Association.[48]
Conferences called Gathering 4 Gardner are held every two years to celebrate the legacy of Martin Gardner, and Conway himself was often a featured speaker at these events, discussing various aspects of recreational mathematics.[49][50]
Select publications
- 1971 – Regular algebra and finite machines. ISBN 0412106205.
- 1976 – ISBN 0121863506.
- 1979 – On the Distribution of Values of Angles Determined by Coplanar Points (with Paul Erdős, Michael Guy, and H. T. Croft). Journal of the London Mathematical Society, vol. II, series 19, pp. 137–143.
- 1979 – Monstrous Moonshine (with Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, vol. 11, issue 2, pp. 308–339.
- 1982 – ISBN 0120911507.
- 1985 – ISBN 0198531990.
- 1988 – Sphere Packings, Lattices, and GroupsISBN 9780387966175.
- 1995 – Minimal-Energy Clusters of Hard Spheres (with Neil Sloane, R. H. Hardin, and Tom Duff). Discrete & Computational Geometry, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 237–259.
- 1996 – The Book of Numbers (with ISBN 0614971667.
- 1997 – The Sensual (quadratic) Form (with Francis Yein Chei Fung). ISBN 1614440255.
- 2002 – On Quaternions and Octonions (with Derek A. Smith). ISBN 1568811349.
- 2008 – ISBN 1568812205.
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e John Horton Conway at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ a b c d J J O'Connor and E F Robertson (2004). "John Conway – Biography". MacTutor History of Mathematics. Retrieved 24 May 2022.
- ^ "COVID-19 Kills Renowned Princeton Mathematician, 'Game Of Life' Inventor John Conway In 3 Days". Mercer Daily Voice. 12 April 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
- ^ a b "CONWAY, Prof. John Horton". Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press.(subscription required)
- ^ "John Horton Conway". Dean of the Faculty, Princeton University. Archived from the original on 16 March 2019. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7910-9719-9.
- ^ Roberts, Siobhan (23 July 2015). "John Horton Conway: the world's most charismatic mathematician". The Guardian.
- ISBN 978-0-19-157938-7.
- ^ ISBN 978-981-4282-29-1.
- ^ "This Is How the Number 3.14 Got the Name 'Pi'". Time. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
- BBC News Magazine: "The Game of Life appeared in Scientific American in 1970, and was by far the most successful of Gardner's columns, in terms of reader response."
- ^ a b Mulcahy, Colm (21 October 2014). "The Top 10 Martin Gardner Scientific American Articles". Scientific American.
- ^ The Math Factor Podcast Website John H. Conway reminisces on his long friendship and collaboration with Martin Gardner.
- ISBN 0-7167-1987-8, Chapter 4. A non-technical overview; reprint of the 1976 Scientific American article.
- ^ Jackson, Allyn (2005). "Interview with Martin Gardner" (PDF). Notices of the AMS. 52 (6): 602–611.
- ^ Roberts, Siobhan (28 August 2015). "A Life In Games: The Playful Genius of John Conway". Quanta Magazine.
- ^ Zandonella, Catherine. "Mathematician John Horton Conway, a 'magical genius' known for inventing the 'Game of Life,' dies at age 82".
- ^ a b Levine, Cecilia (12 April 2020). "COVID-19 Kills Renowned Princeton Mathematician, 'Game Of Life' Inventor John Conway In 3 Days". Mercer Daily Voice.
- ^ Zandonella, Catherine (14 April 2020). "Mathematician John Horton Conway, a 'magical genius' known for inventing the 'Game of Life,' dies at age 82". Princeton University. Retrieved 15 April 2020.
- ^ Van den Brandhof, Alex (12 April 2020). "Mathematician Conway was a playful genius and expert on symmetry". NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). Retrieved 12 April 2020.
- ^ Roberts, Siobhan (15 April 2020). "John Horton Conway, a 'Magical Genius' in Math, Dies at 82". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 April 2020.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
- JSTOR 24927642.
- ^ "DMOZ: Conway's Game of Life: Sites". Archived from the original on 17 March 2017. Retrieved 11 January 2017.
- ^ "LifeWiki". www.conwaylife.com.
- ^ Does John Conway hate his Game of Life? (video). Youtube
- ^ MacTutor History: The game made Conway instantly famous, but it also opened up a whole new field of mathematical research, the field of cellular automata.
- ISBN 978-3319198415.
- ^ Case, James (1 April 2014). "Martin Gardner's Mathematical Grapevine". SIAM NEWS. Book reviews of Gardner, Martin, 2013 Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner. Princeton University Press and Henle, Michael; Hopkins, Brian (edts.) 2012 Martin Gardner in the Twenty-First Century. MAA Publications.
- Discover Magazine, 1 December 1995
- ^ Conway, J. H. (1967). "Four-dimensional Archimedean polytopes". Proc. Colloquium on Convexity, Copenhagen. Kobenhavns Univ. Mat. Institut: 38–39.
- .
- Wolfram MathWorld
- ISBN 0883850273
- ^ Perko, Ken (1982). "Primality of certain knots" (PDF). Topology Proceedings. 7: 109–118.
- doi:10.1038/523406a.
- ^ Darling, David. Monstrous Moonshine conjecture. Encyclopedia of Science
- ^ Jorge Nuno Silva (September 2005). "Breakfast with John Horton Conway" (PDF). EMS Newsletter. 57: 32–34.
- ^ Day 2 - The notorious Collatz conjecture - Terence Tao, retrieved 23 March 2023
- .
- ^ Baez, John (2 October 1993). "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 20)".
- ^ Conway's Proof Of The Free Will Theorem Archived 25 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine by Jasvir Nagra
- ^ a b "List of LMS prize winners | London Mathematical Society". www.lms.ac.uk.
- ^ a b "John Conway". The Royal Society. Retrieved 11 April 2020.
- S2CID 245355088.
- ^ Sturla, Anna (14 April 2020). "John H. Conway, a renowned mathematician who created one of the first computer games, dies of coronavirus complications". CNN. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
- ^ "Doctor Honoris Causa for John Horton Conway". Alexandru Ioan Cuza University. 19 June 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
- ^ "Honorary Members". The Mathematical Association. Retrieved 11 April 2020.
- ^ Presentation Videos Archived 9 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine from 2014 Gathering 4 Gardner
- ^ Bellos, Alex (2008). The science of fun. The Guardian, 30 May 2008
- – via academic.oup.com.
- .
Sources
- Alpert, Mark (1999). Not Just Fun and Games Scientific American, April 1999
- Boden, Margaret (2006). Mind As Machine, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 1271
- du Sautoy, Marcus (2008). Symmetry, HarperCollins, p. 308
- Guy, Richard K (1983). Conway's Prime Producing Machine Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan. 1983), pp. 26–33
- Roberts, Siobhan (2015). Genius at play: The curious mind of John Horton Conway. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1620405932.
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "John Horton Conway", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- John Horton Conway at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- Princeton University (2009). Bibliography of John H. Conway Archived 27 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine Mathematics Department
- Seife, Charles (1994). Impressions of Conway The Sciences
- Schleicher, Dierk (2011), Interview with John Conway, Notices of the AMS
External links
- John Horton Conway's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
- Conway, John (20 April 2009). "Proof of the Free Will Theorem" (Video). Archived Lectures.
- John Conway. Videos. Numberphile. playlist on YouTube
- Look-and-Say Numbers. Feat John Conway (2014) on YouTube
- Inventing the Game of Life (2014) on YouTube
- Look-and-Say Numbers. Feat John Conway (2014) on
- The Princeton Brick (2014) on YouTubeConway leading a tour of brickwork patterns in Princeton, lecturing on the ordinals and on sums of powers and the Bernoulli numbers
- necrology by Keith Hartnett in Quanta Magazine, April 20, 2020