Richard Guy, the discoverer of the glider in Conway's Game of Life, also passed away last month. In 2017, Richard gave a talk for the 50th Anniversary of the U

Richard Guy, the discoverer of the glider in Conway's Game of Life, also passed away last month. In 2017, Richard gave a talk for the 50th Anniversary of the University of Calgary (and his 100th birthday). Much of it was recounting stories of his past in response to questions from the audience. When asked about the glider, he told us how Conway came up with the Game of Life and invited a number of colleagues to help investigate its implications. They spent the next few days just simulating the Game of Life by hand on graph paper. Richard happened to come across it from one of his initial conditions. Today you could discover the glider in minutes by playing with an interactive simulation. It's interesting how much more effort it used to be. I suppose, though, that you'd build better intuition and understanding doing it by hand.