John Conway has died

People here might know him best for the "Game of Life"[0], but he did so much more. The book about Conway by Siobhan Roberts is an interesting read about the man and his work. There's a review here.[1]

Some will know Conway via is work on the Classification of Finite Simple Groups (with many others), some via his "Look and Say" sequence, while still others will know his book "Winning Ways"[2], written with Richard Guy[3] and Elwyn Berlekamp[4]. My copy signed by all three is something I treasure.

I was privileged to know all three of them, and I mourn their passing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winning_Ways_for_your_Mathemat...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_K._Guy

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwyn_Berlekamp

Added in Edit:

From his wikipedia page:

Known for: Surreal numbers, Conway groups, Monstrous moonshine, Doomsday algorithm, Look-and-say sequence, Icosians, Mathieu groupoid, Free will theorem, Conway chained arrow notation, Conway criterion, Conway notation (knot theory), Conway polyhedron notation, ATLAS of Finite Groups, Conway's Game of Life

How sad :-( Game of life was one of the first things I've coded in the early 80s I was really proud of as a kid (highly optimized Z80 maschine code to make it as fast as possible per frame).

I was hugely inspired by the concept, especially by gliders. I thought Conway to be a Genius. He might have gone but the Game of Life and the inspiration it brings will always be with us.

He was a great mathematician.

I’m experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, because a few hours ago I was reading about Conway polynomials:

“While there is a unique finite field of order p^n up to isomorphism, the representation of the field elements depends on the choice of the irreducible polynomial. The Conway polynomial is a way of standardizing this choice.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_polynomial_(finite_fi...

I know he resented to be known for the game of life, because of all the other wonderful works, but it will forever standout in our memories of him because of profound influence it had on us.

There were several videos that Numberphile did with Conway, including one where he talked about what problems he'd like to see before he died and his own mortality [0]. In particular he wanted to know why the Monster group [1] exists, what it's about, why it's there [2]. I don't know enough about it to know if progress was made toward that in the past few years since the video was made.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCe5HUObD4

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_group

[2] https://youtu.be/xOCe5HUObD4?t=409