Apr 11, 2020
RIP John Conway
Today, sadly, one of the greatest mathematical minds (and the author’s mathematical idol) passed away. John Conway leaves a legacy of the most awe-inspiring mathematical and magical mind-twisters—the Monster group and monstrous moonshine, surreal numbers, Sprouts, Hackenbush, the Game of Life, the Angel problem, FRACTRAN, his 15-theorem, his 13-function, rational tangles, icosians, lexicodes, the look-and-say sequence, Conway’s soldiers, the free will theorem…
This is a very, very, very sad day.
Read the Guardian’s article John Horton Conway: the world’s most charismatic mathematician.
Thoughts by Jordan Ellenberg, Card Colm Mulcahy, Alex Bellos, Brady Haran (Numberphile), Colin Wright, Michael Stevens (Vsauce).