"He could be easily distracted by what he called 'nerdish delights.' He once went on a flexagon binge... [working with] 'polygons, folded from straight or crooked strips of paper, which have the fascinating property of changing their faces when they are flexed.' He built a water-powered computer, which he called Winnie (Water Initiated Nonchalantly Numerical Integrating Engine).... Hired at Cambridge as an assistant lecturer, Dr. Conway gained a reputation for his high jinks (not to mention his disheveled appearance). Lecturing on symmetry and the Platonic solids, he might bring in a turnip as a prop, carving it one slice at a time into, say, an icosahedron, with its 20 triangular faces, eating the scraps as he went.... Dr. Conway invented a profusion of games — like Phutball (short for Philosopher’s Football, which is a little like checkers on a Go board)... [He] published the Monstrous Moonshine conjecture, investigating an elusive symmetry group that lives in 196,883 dimensions.... Asked by a reporter... about his life of the mind, he replied: 'What happens most of the time is nothing. You just can’t have ideas often.'... He gave over his summers... to teaching at math camps [where] his talks were advertised vaguely as 'John Conway Hour, NTBA' (Not to Be Announced). He would take topic requests from students and deliver an extemporaneous lecture. Math, Dr. Conway believed, should be fun. 'He often thought that the math we were teaching was too serious.... to him, fun was deep... he wanted to make sure that the playfulness was always, always there.'"
From "John Horton Conway, a ‘Magical Genius’ in Math, Dies at 82/He made profound contributions to number theory, coding theory, probability theory, topology, algebra and more — and created games from it all. He died of the coronavirus" (NYT).
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I'm among a list of co-authors of a couple of papers with him. Play for pay jobs, though we played in different areas.
He was 82 years old. An interesting question (although one more for the statisticians than the pure math guys like him) is whether his death caused the median age of coronavirus fatalities to go up or down. I saw an estimate a couple of days ago that more people over the age of 100 have died worldwide than those under 30.
He invented the game of Life, which is a classic coding project for CompSci students. Good stuff. Also an odd personality. He was invited to give a lecture at Google. First thing he says to he group is that he is upset they asked to see his ID to get in the facility, and if he knew they were going to do that he would have declined.
As a student, Dr. Conway cultivated his acknowledged lifelong preference for being lazy, playing games and doing no work.
My first thought: Someone is writing about Kelly Anne's husband. Then I remembered that George is too stupid to even have a PhD.
"There are two kinds of geniuses: the "ordinary" and the "magicians." An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark."
So, magician?
So the bugger died at 83 from the coronavirus. I was a math major. Never heard of him. Why is this significant? A lot of 82 year olds in nursing homes are dropping off the twig. The laws of life.
People like him sound better in eulogies.
Ryan: I knew his name only from that automaton simulation that bears his name, which I read about in Byte magazine (remember it?) back in the '70s. Did he inspire Mandelbrot, or Wolfram, or was it the other way round? And does it matter.
A life well-lived. Would that more of us (but not all of us) were like him. RIP.
Tough crowd.
He seems like a true eccentric, a bit similar to Paul Erdos. (Needs umlaut over the o).
BTW, that's not lazy, that's genius. Sorry if you don't get it.
Although he probably did vote Democrat, if he voted, which I tend to doubt.
Sebastian: I remember the quote, but I don't remember who it was about. Feynman?
That's one Hell of a loss to mathematics.
So the bugger died at 83 from the coronavirus. A lot of 82 year olds in nursing homes are dropping off the twig. The laws of life. What I want to ask is if the NYT would be tlking about him if he died as a natural course of things.
Another victim of the Communist Chinese.
@John Cunningham, I once had to explain the concept of the Erdős number to a mathematician I knew. He researched it, and discovered that he was a 2. I was impressed and congratulated him.
Conway had Erdos number 1 (wrote a paper with Erdos).
These are the glory days for Murder,Inc.
Just don't leave any obvious marks. And cover them in bum's odor to make it seem like they were running a high fever.
And they get classified as a COVID-19 death.
Conway and Penrose. Mathematics lost some greats lately.
"He seems like a true eccentric, a bit similar to Paul Erdos. (Needs umlaut over the o)."
I am fairly certain Erdos was way more weird. The gold standard of weird.
"Feynman?"
Yes.
Sebastian: I thought so. It fits. Thanks.
rosebud: I didn't know that Roger Penrose was gone.
I will have to be sad now, sorry. He tiled the plane, aperiodically. We will not see his like again any time soon.
What a waste death is. It's really the only bad thing about it, but it's bad.
He would take topic requests from students
I attended a talk by Conway and he started by writing four topics on the board and inviting a vote as to which one he should lecture on. The choice was the fifteen theorem which he and collaborators had just recently proved. It wasn't the most technical topic listed, but it was something where everyone could understand what was being proved. It was a nice talk, he began by discussing the problem, then asked the question "How does one prove something like this?" and when on to prove one of the various cases that needed to be covered.
In person, he was on the short side, informally dressed, and wore his trademark sandals. It is a shame that he died so suddenly of covid-19.
What I want to ask is if the NYT would be tlking about him if he died as a natural course of things.
4/15/20, 8:35 PM
Actually, I think they would since he was, you know, quite an accomplished man.
> "John Horton Conway, a ‘Magical Genius’ in Math, Dies at 82/He made profound contributions to number theory, coding theory, probability theory, topology, algebra and more — and created games from it all. >>>He died of the coronavirus" <<<(NYT). <
Keep repeating the "Big Lie".
For about ten years my boss's boss was RJ Faudree, Erdos Number 1 with 50 joint papers, and recipient of the Euler Prize.
He was a friendly guy, used to come to the library and would chat with people, or sometimes eat lunch with junior (non-math) faculty or staff.
Narr
But that was after Erdos had left
Did he die from -19 or with it? Did he die from 82 or with it? Did he die from complications from both? Do other people with 82 die from other things? Lot of science-ing out there.
when i was a draftsman long time ago, i met an engineer who told us stories about a Manhattan college professor who brought in bras to teach students about earthquake proofing.
@techsan
Why do you care? He developed a fever on Wednesday and died on Saturday. He had been having health problems for several years, but I don't see any reason why folks would lie about the cause. Honestly, this is not the time or place for these tiresome tirades unless you have something new to add, which is highly unlikely at this point.
Didn't he take over from Marvin Gardner in the Scientific American magazine?
I have some recollection of when he came up with the Game of Life, I think back when I was an undergrad math major.
Played around with it a bit but never really got into it.
--gpm
Interesting:
Link
I just read that the most common Erdos number for those who can determine they have one is five. I find this odd. Would have guessed that the bigger the number the more people who would have it. Mine is 5 though.
I met him at a friend's dinner party. He wanted to play backgammon all night. (Not with me. I don't play.)
He had many fans among young people who love math.
So the bugger died at 83 from the coronavirus. I was a math major. Never heard of him. Why is this significant? A lot of 82 year olds in nursing homes are dropping off the twig. The laws of life.
Just don't leave any obvious marks.And cover them in bum's odor to make it seem like they were running a high fever. And they get classified as a COVID-19 death.
I have always been envious of a brain like that.
chickelit,
"Then I remembered that George is too stupid to even have a PhD."
No, he's not. Trust me. And I'm not defending his intelligence when I say that.
Why is this significant?
The "game of life" showed how simple rules can produce complicated patterns, just like real life. Same goes for fractals.
I tried extending the "game of life" to multiple "life forms", which would reproduce or die by different rules and would interact with each other, but nothing cool came of it.
Can anyone die of anything else right now? I think Coronavirus is it now. There are no other causes of death now.
Lies, lies, lies
I whiled away many an hour with a pen and graph paper back in the day, playing Life. Learned it from a psychology grad student.
How doesn't the NYT know it's "hijinks" not "high jinks"?
I first noticed a marked increase in egregiously sloppy writing in the major papers a decade ago. Is this the reaping of Common Core standards, or have they fired all the editors? Or do the editors not know any more than the journalists these days?
I first noticed a marked increase in egregiously sloppy writing in the major papers
The history of English is an example of punctuated evolution. I think it will be a different language in fifty years.
gpm: Didn't he take over from Marvin Gardner in the Scientific American magazine?
Martin Gardner, and no; that was one of my profs at IU, Douglas Hofstadter.
People who only knew Conway for his Game of Life are missing out. First of all, there's Surreal Numbers, Donald Knuth's novel (yes, really) about Conway's discovery of this number system. Then there's the Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays series, which brilliantly connects game theory (the same subject John Nash's mind made beautiful) with games most of us are familiar with, vs. working at RAND on how to prevent Wargames' "Global Thermonuclear War."
Very sad, regardless of the cause of death.
I met him once about 20 years ago at a conference. Gave a spectacularly entertaining talk. Then he showed up in the audience for my talk in the concurrent sessions the next day. That was a bit intimidating. But he was as engaging as an audience member as he had been as the speaker -- smiling the whole time, clearly really into the topic. Then at the end when I was presenting related open problems for further inquiry, he solved one of them (my colleague and I had been unsuccessful in solving ourselves) before I could even finish stating it. Truly a magic-level genius.
Mark N.
Erdos number: 2
I'm sorry that he is gone; he was a uniquely gifted person who made a huge contribution to the world. And after reading so many comments here from readers who understand his work, I feel as though I have the IQ of a snowpea in comparison. My Erdos # is, well, I do know a guy named Erdos. Nice man; very very smart and eccentric--maybe a relative?
All languages will be different in fifty years.
Narr
It's Science
This was a fascinating thread. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Now I know what an Erdős number is, and the Wikipedia page adds that there's an Erdős-Bacon number (actress-mathematician Danica McKellar at the top with 6) and an Erdős-Bacon-Black Sabbath number for those who sing in public (explanation here). Stephen Hawking tops that list with 8, for performing with Pink Floyd, ahead of Natalie Portman.
Bill Peschel
Erdős number: 0
Erdős-Bacon number: 3
Erdős-Bacon-Black Sabbath: 3
Thanks For This Post
Regards
Jessica
I have the Scientific American with Gardner's article downstairs. Somewhere. Sad to lose such treasures.
My Erdos number is Surreal. . .
Apologies for mucking up Martin Gardner's name. Was probably thinking of Monopoly . . .
Forgot about Hofstadter, even though I've read Godel, Escher, and Bach a couple of times (I get the math/logic stuff a lot better than the music stuff, since I come from one of the most unmusical families I know of; our genes even stamped out the ones from my very musical sister-in-law). I had pretty much stopped reading Scientific American by that point.
I think I associated Conway with Gardner because Gardner was the one who popularized the Game of Life.
--gpm
The guy was not a genius, he was just an enthusiastic hobbyist.
Neither was Erdos, by the way (not a genius). Another self-indulgent little man, who thought his goofy interests were worth sacrificing everything else in life for, including being a decent human being who cared about others, rather than being an "eccentric" who lived life only to engage in his eccentricities.
Think about it like this.
Imagine you are a professor of a not very difficult subject - comparative literature, ornithology, or , like these guys, Conway and Erdos, i unusual patterns that can be mathematically described.
Now imagine it is 2018 or so and you have been doing the same thing since, like, the 1940s. In other words, you have focused on the same subject - comparative literature, ornithology, or recreational math, EVERY DAY while other people worked for a living, long enough to have played a round of golf on the same golf course 500 or a thousand times a year times for about 70 years. While other people showed up for their first day on the job and worked for decades, only to retire many years later, while you were having fun, every day.
And people are surprised because you play golf well?
Please.
Conway was the real deal. I was very sorry to see that he had died.
Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark."
So, magician?
More like off-the-scales creative.
At the absolute top level, the thing that really distinguishes mathematicians isn't solving hard problems. It's discovering new problems to solve.
The game of life is a good example. It's an incredibly rich field of study that he invented doodling on graph paper and putting stones on a go board. Millions of people own pencils, paper, and game boards. Only one invented a new branch of mathematics with them.
Great Post to Read
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