John H. Conway

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John H. Conway [1] John Horton Conway, (December 26, 1937 – April 11, 2020)

was a British mathematician and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University [2]. His research interests were about the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, coding theory [3] and quantum physics. He is best known for the invention of the Game of Life [4], and for the co-development of combinatorial game theory [5] along with a remarkable new way to construct numbers as introduced in his 1976 book On Numbers and Games. His surreal numbers were subject of a mathematical novel by Donald Knuth [6]. On April 8, 2020, Conway developed symptoms of COVID-19. On April 11, he died in New Brunswick, New Jersey at the age of 82 [7].

Selected Publications#

[8] [9]

1970 …#

• John H. Conway (1971). Regular Algebra and Finite Machines. Chapman and Hall, London
• John H. Conway (1976). On Numbers and Games. Academic Press
• John H. Conway, Vera Pless, Neil Sloane (1979). Self-dual codes over GF(3) and GF(4) of length not exceeding 16. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 25, No. 3 [10] [11]
• John H. Conway, Simon P. Norton (1979). Monstrous Moonshine. Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, Vol. 11, 308–339

1980 …#

• John H. Conway (1980). On the Enumeration of Self-Dual Codes. Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, Vol. 28
• Elwyn Berlekamp, John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy (1982). Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays. Vol. 1, 1st edition, Academic Press
• Elwyn Berlekamp, John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy (1982). Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays. Vol. 2, 1st edition, Academic Press
• John H. Conway, Neil Sloane (1988). Sphere Packing, Lattices and Groups. Springer

1990 …#

• Richard K. Guy, John H. Conway, Elwyn Berlekamp, Vera Pless, Aviezri Fraenkel, Richard J. Nowakowski (1991). Combinatorial Games. Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics, No. 43
• John H. Conway (1996). The Angel Problem. in Richard J. Nowakowski (ed) (1996). Games of No Chance, MSRI Publications Volume 29, Cambridge University Press, Papers from the Combinatorial Games Workshop held in Berkeley, CA, July 11–21, 1994 [12]
• John H. Conway, Neil Sloane (1998). Sphere Packing, Lattices and Groups. 3rd edition, Springer

2000 …#

• John H. Conway (2001). On Numbers and Games. 2nd edition, A K Peters Ltd.
• Elwyn Berlekamp, John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy (2001). Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays. Vol. 1, 2nd edition, A K Peters Ltd.
• Elwyn Berlekamp, John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy (2003). Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays. Vol. 2, 2nd edition, A K Peters Ltd.
• Elwyn Berlekamp, John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy (2003). Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays. Vol. 3, A K Peters Ltd.
• Elwyn Berlekamp, John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy (2004). Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays. Vol. 4, A K Peters Ltd.
• John H. Conway, Noam D. Elkies, Jeremy L. Martin (2006). The Mathieu Group M 12 and Its Pseudogroup Extension M 13. Experimental Mathematics, Vol. 15, No. 2 [13] [14]
• John H. Conway, Simon B. Kochen (2006). The Free Will Theorem. arXiv:quant-ph/0604079
• John H. Conway, Simon B. Kochen (2007). Thou Shalt Not Clone One Bit!. arXiv:0711.2310
• John H. Conway, Simon B. Kochen (2008). The Strong Free Will Theorem. arXiv:0807.3286

2010 …#

• William Cavendish, John H. Conway (2010). Symmetrically Bordered Surfaces. The American Mathematical Monthly 117, pdf
• John H. Conway (2013). On Unsettleable Arithmetical Problems. The American Mathematical Monthly 120
• Siobhan Roberts (2015). Genius at Play - The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway. Bloomsbury Publishing, YouTube Video

External Links#

John H. Conway#

• John Horton Conway from Wikipedia
• The Mathematics Genealogy Project - John Conway
• Conway biography - MacTutor
• John Conway - АдептИС: Под знаком Leonardo da Vinci (Russian)

Topics#

• Angel problem from Wikipedia
• Conway’s Game of Life from Wikipedia
• Conway group from Wikipedia
• Conway notation (knot theory) from Wikipedia
• Conway polyhedron notation from Wikipedia
• Doomsday rule from Wikipedia
• Free will theorem from Wikipedia
• Hackenbush from Wikipedia
• Monstrous moonshine from Wikipedia

Videos#

• Inventing Game of Life - Numberphile, YouTube Video

References#

1. ↑ Conway biography - MacTutor
2. ↑ John Conway | Department of Mathematics
3. ↑ John Horton Conway from Wikipedia
4. ↑ Martin Gardner (1970). Mathematical Games - The fantastic combinations of John Conway’s new solitaire game “life”. Scientific American, Vol. 223, pp. 120-123.
5. ↑ Richard J. Nowakowski (2009). The History of Combinatorial Game Theory. Dalhousie University, pdf
6. ↑ Donald Knuth (1974). Surreal Numbers - How two ex-students turned on to pure mathematics and found total happiness. Addison-Wesley
7. ↑ English mathematician John Horton Conway dies after contracting COVID-19 - Wikinews, the free news source
8. ↑ dblp: John H. Conway
9. ↑ John H. Conway - Bibliography (pdf)
10. ↑ Dual code from Wikipedia
11. ↑ Finite field from Wikipedia
12. ↑ Angel problem from Wikipedia
13. ↑ Mathieu group M12 from Wikipedia
14. ↑ Mathieu groupoid from Wikipedia

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