John Horton Conway

Also known as John H. Conway, JHC, John Conway, Conway

English mathematician (1937–2020)

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple
· 1996 · cited 200,204x
Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
· 2021 · cited 41,537x
Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology
· 2000 · cited 36,306x
Matplotlib: A 2D Graphics Environment
· 2007 · cited 34,195x
The MOS 36-ltem Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36)
· 1992 · cited 28,822x

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Quotes

“When I was on the train from Liverpool to Cambridge to become a student, it occurred to me that no one at Cambridge knew I was painfully shy, so I could become an extrovert instead of an introvert.”
“... I have said for twenty-five or thirty years that the one thing I would really like to know before I die is why the monster group exists."”
“[I]n two dimensions the... [19 point] hexagonal lattice solves the packing, kissing, covering and quantizing problems. ...[T]his ...book is ...a search for similar nice patterns in higher dimensions.”

Article

John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician. He was active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life.

Born and raised in Liverpool, Conway spent the first half of his career at the University of Cambridge before moving to the United States, where he held the John von Neumann Professorship at Princeton University for the rest of his career. On 11 April 2020, at age 82, he died of complications from COVID-19.