13/04/2020

Mathematician John Conway dies of Covid-19 at age 82.

Foto: Universidade de Princeton, Denise Applewhite

Mathematician and Princeton University professor John Horton Conway died last Saturday (11) victim of Covid-19, at age 82. One of Conway's most notable contributions to science was the invention of the "Game of Life", the best-known example of a cellular automaton. Made by hand, long before the popularization of computers, the game played an important role in the theoretical interest and practice of programming and data display.

Conway also worked in the areas of finite group theory, knot theory, number theory, and coding theory. “He was an extraordinary mathematician and a science communicator with exceptional charisma. It’s no exaggeration to say he breathed mathematics,” emphasizes Marcelo Viana, director-general of IMPA.

According to neuroscientist and Princeton professor Sam Wang, Conway developed a fever on the morning of last Wednesday (8). On Twitter, Wang lamented the death of his colleague. “An incomparable mathematician, a pleasant neighbor and an excellent coffee connoisseur. It was a sudden death. Part of the harsh price paid for coronavirus in New Jersey,” he stated.

John Conway was born in Liverpool, England, and by the age of 11 already had the ambition to become a mathematician. In 1959, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree and began conducting research in number theory with Harold Davenport, where he developed an interest in infinite ordinals. After completing his doctorate in 1964, he became a fellow and lecturer in mathematics at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge .

In the early 1980s, the Briton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society , recognized as a “versatile mathematician with a profound combinatorial insight and algebraic virtuosity, particularly in the construction and manipulation of ‘off-beat’ algebraic structures that illuminate a wide variety of problems in completely unexpected ways. He has made distinct contributions to finite group theory, knot theory, mathematical logic, and game theory (as well as to its practice).”

Since 1987, Conway held the John von Neumann Chair of Mathematics at Princeton University, where he remained until his death. Journalist Siobhan Roberts, author of " Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway," states that Conway is a combination of "Archimedes, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dalí, and Richard Feynman, all rolled into one—a singular mathematician with the charisma of a rock star, a sharp sense of humor, a promiscuous curiosity, and a burning desire to explain everything about the world to everyone."