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Conway died last april from Covid. I had the pleasure of attending a lecture of him once. He used an old-fashioned overhead projector, the type where a strong

Conway died last april from Covid. I had the pleasure of attending a lecture of him once. He used an old-fashioned overhead projector, the type where a strong light shines through a plastic sheet. The plastic sheet was filled with formulas and stuff but on top of that was a sheet of paper. Initially the screen was dark, but as the lecture progressed he would tear-off bits and pieces of the paper to reveal more and more of the slide underneath. Entertaining and literally illuminating his topic.

mkl 5y ago
I've just read a fantastic biography of him: https://siobhanroberts.com/genius-at-play/ https://siobhanroberts.com/genius-at-play/ He was thoroughly sick of the Game of Life from soon after its discovery and fame via Martin Gardner's article. Once it was proved to be Turing complete, so "everything" was possible, it became uninteresting to him.
- OscarCunningham 5y ago
  They missed the opportunity to call it 'Conway's Life of Games'! There are many open problems about Life that universality doesn't answer, such as whether there exists an oscillator of every period. There was a problem posed by Conway himself that was solved just this year! https://cp4space.hatsya.com/2022/01/14/conway-conjecture-settled/ https://cp4space.hatsya.com/2022/01/14/conway-conjecture-set...
  - mkl 5y ago
    Yes. "Genius at Play" does fit very well though, as does the double meaning of "curious" in the subtitle "The curious mind of John Horton Conway".
- ColinWright 5y ago
  He went through a phase of being sick of it, but towards the last years he came back to it a bit. It was fun watching him and Bill Gosper talking about some of the finer points.
ColinWright 5y ago
Not last April, the April before. He died April 11th, 2020. He was an entertaining man ... it was great fun playing backgammon against him, and he was always baffling when he went off on one of his latest ideas and/or investigations. My notebook has his notes made by him on one of those things.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That's pretty special.

mkl 5y ago

I've just read a fantastic biography of him: https://siobhanroberts.com/genius-at-play/ https://siobhanroberts.com/genius-at-play/ He was thoroughly sick of the Game of Life from soon after its discovery and fame via Martin Gardner's article. Once it was proved to be Turing complete, so "everything" was possible, it became uninteresting to him.

OscarCunningham 5y ago
They missed the opportunity to call it 'Conway's Life of Games'! There are many open problems about Life that universality doesn't answer, such as whether there exists an oscillator of every period. There was a problem posed by Conway himself that was solved just this year! https://cp4space.hatsya.com/2022/01/14/conway-conjecture-settled/ https://cp4space.hatsya.com/2022/01/14/conway-conjecture-set...
- mkl 5y ago
  Yes. "Genius at Play" does fit very well though, as does the double meaning of "curious" in the subtitle "The curious mind of John Horton Conway".
ColinWright 5y ago
He went through a phase of being sick of it, but towards the last years he came back to it a bit. It was fun watching him and Bill Gosper talking about some of the finer points.

ColinWright 5y ago

Not last April, the April before. He died April 11th, 2020. He was an entertaining man ... it was great fun playing backgammon against him, and he was always baffling when he went off on one of his latest ideas and/or investigations. My notebook has his notes made by him on one of those things.

jacquesm 5y ago
That's pretty special.