Great Mathematician John Horton Conway
John Horton Conway (b1937)
The Liverpudlian is best known for the serious maths that has come from his analyses of games and puzzles. In 1970, he came up with the rules for the Game of Life, a game in which you see how patterns of cells evolve in a grid. Early computer scientists adored playing Life, earning Conway star status.
He has made important contributions to many branches of pure maths, such as group theory, number theory and geometry and, with collaborators, has also come up with wonderful-sounding concepts like surreal numbers, the grand anti-prism and monstrous moonshine.
