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John Conway has died

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Re: John Conway has died

#163

Post by qnsi »

ivansavz wrote: post #147
Ologn wrote: post #117

Of course, Conway was a serious mathematician who was slightly vexed that the thing he might be most remembered for is what he considered a cast-off game that he dabbled with in the late 1960s. Conway talked about determinism (and free will) from a mathematical and scientific perspective in interviews and lectures. I found what he had to say very interesting - I don't know if he came up with all the ideas he talked a…

Based on your comment, I found these lecture series "The Free Will Lectures - John Conway [2009]" = https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhsb6tmzSpixUGjmJq6g9... and saving to watch later.

This is amazing. You can start with the last lecture if you are short on time (and probably like me more interested in implications and not strong in math to follow the rest).

Re: John Conway has died

#164

Post by masswerk »

hoten wrote: post #146

Sad to hear this. This motivated me to dig up some old code, perhaps someone here will appreciate it. Maybe you can find a new rule set to Conway's Game of Life that produces undiscovered patterns. [1] https://hoten.cc/blog/life/ [2] https://connorjclark.github.io/dart-life/#life

Here's my in memoriam exercise in BASIC for the PET 2001 (running in emulation): https://www.masswerk.at/pet/?run=life.txt

Re: John Conway has died

#166

Post by QuesnayJr »

DonHopkins wrote: post #143
sndean wrote: post #10

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/wa…

TIL John Conway's son was once known as "the baby monster", and that Jupiter has a whole lot of elementary particles, but I can't quite grasp the rest of what I just read. http://www.ams.org/notices/200209/what-is.pdf >What is... The Monster? By Richard E. Borcherds. >When I was a graduate student, my supervisor John Conway would bring into the department his one year-old son, who was soon known as the baby monster.…

That article is aimed at mathematicians. A high level summary is that there are two completely unrelated things, the Monster group and modular forms. (Groups are sets of symmetries. Modular functions are special functions of complex numbers. The related topic of modular forms come up in the proof of Fermat's last theorem.) These two things are obviously unrelated, so when someone spotted a numerical coincidence in some numbers that show up in each, people scoffed. (Conway is the one that nicknamed it "moonshine".)

It turns out it's completely true, and the proof uses a bunch of mathematical techniques that were developed when studying string theory for physics. The whole thing is an incredibly unlikely story.

Re: John Conway has died

#167

Post by 0az »

credit_guy wrote: post #34

I only once saw John Conway giving a talk. I don't remember the topic (it was >20y ago), but I remember how it went. He gave some definitions, then started to give some examples and work out on the blackboard some calculations. It all felt quite trivial. At some point one calculation doesn't work out. He checked again, but still it didn't work. He started pacing in front of the blackboard, and said that this is quite…

I had the opportunity to watch him lecture for a week, almost a decade ago.

I don't remember what it was about (maybe Catalan numbers?), but ten years later, I wish I'd been able to recall more.

Rest in peace.

Re: John Conway has died

#169

Post by brianzelip »

brianzelip wrote: post #168

Interesting that, at the time of commenting, his Wikipedia page hasn't been updated with his death yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway Peace, and rest.

Never mind! It's not that interesting, what with the announcements at the top of the page explaining why the page is locked for editing.
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