Did John H. Conway Pass Away?

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SUMMARY

John H. Conway, renowned mathematician and inventor of the Game of Life, passed away due to COVID-19. Reliable sources confirming his death include an obituary from Daily Voice and a blog post by Scott Aaronson, which cites a comment from Conway's widow. Wikipedia has also updated its entry to reflect this information. His contributions to mathematics and computer science, particularly through his work on the Game of Life, have left a lasting impact.

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robphy
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Sad.

There were a lot of reports on Twitter... but, at the time of this posting, nothing points to the usual reliable sources.
https://trenden.nice2have.jp/april-11th-2020-at-1300-john-conway-twitter-buzz/
Wikipedia has been going back and forth with edits... but now seems to have accepted it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_John_Horton_Conway

The following seems the most reliable.


https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4732 (claims to have a comment by John's widow)

https://dailyvoice.com/new-jersey/m...f-life-inventor-john-conway-in-3-days/786461/ (an online newspaper in that area near Princeton)

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/04/1...speels-genie-en-kenner-van-symmetrie-a3996590
John Horton Conway

https://www.math.princeton.edu/people/john-conway
https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=18849

I met him once at a math conference for students [like myself at the time] at Syracuse.
He complimented me on a talk I gave on a geometrical construction in relativity.

RIP.

robphy

https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079v1


more videos:


RIP
 
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Mathematics news on Phys.org
:cry: Requiescat in pace, John
 
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I really enjoyed his video on the Monster Group
 
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Interview with John Horton Conway
https://www.ams.org/notices/201305/rnoti-p567.pdfA Life in Games
https://www.quantamagazine.org/john-conways-life-in-games-20150828/

has this image

1586745083485.png

"A survey of Life-forms, from a 1970 letter to Martin Gardner.
Courtesy of James Gardner, Martin Gardner Papers, Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries"
 
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Professor Conway's 'game of life' was one of the most neato things I learned when I first stepped on the way to becoming a computer nerd. He was an inspiration to us. He will be sorely missed.
 




 
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  • #10
RIP John Conway. I know he hated being famous for the game of life, since he thought his other more interesting work had been overshadowed. Anyway, this is my favorite game of life video.

 
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Prof. Conway was one of the all-time greats ##-## many aspiring programmers admired him ##-## in the early '80s one of my buddies wrote a tribute Game of Life program in PL1 that displayed nicely on a 3270 ##\dots##
 
  • #15
I gave my respect to him. RIP John Conway. :cry: