John Horton Conway
Obituary John Horton Conway (1937–2020) Playful master of games who transformed mathematics. ohn Horton Conway was one of the Monstrous Moonshine conjectures. These, most versatile mathematicians of the for the first time, seriously connected finite past century, who made influential con- symmetry groups to analysis — and thus dis- tributions to group theory, analysis, crete maths to non-discrete maths. Today, topology, number theory, geometry, the Moonshine conjectures play a key part Jalgebra and combinatorial game theory. His in physics — including in the understanding deep yet accessible work, larger-than-life of black holes in string theory — inspiring a personality, quirky sense of humour and wave of further such discoveries connecting ability to talk about mathematics with any and algebra, analysis, physics and beyond. all who would listen made him the centre of Conway’s discovery of a new knot invariant attention and a pop icon everywhere he went, — used to tell different knots apart — called the among mathematicians and amateurs alike. Conway polynomial became an important His lectures about numbers, games, magic, topic of research in topology. In geometry, he knots, rainbows, tilings, free will and more made key discoveries in the study of symme- captured the public’s imagination. tries, sphere packings, lattices, polyhedra and Conway, who died at the age of 82 from tilings, including properties of quasi-periodic complications related to COVID-19, was a tilings as developed by Roger Penrose. lover of games of all kinds. He spent hours In algebra, Conway discovered another in the common rooms of the University of important system of numbers, the icosians, Cambridge, UK, and Princeton University with his long-time collaborator Neil Sloane.
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