John Horton Conway | |
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![]() Conway in June 2005 | |
Born | |
Died | 11 April 2020 New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S. | (aged 82)
Education | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (BA, MA, PhD) |
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]