John Horton Conway
   HOME



picture info

John Horton Conway
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. Early life and education Conway was born on 26 December 1937 in Liverpool, the son of Cyril Horton Conway and Agnes Boyce. He became interested in mathematics at a very early age. By the time he was 11, his ambition was to become a mathematician. After leaving sixth form, he studied mathematics at Gonville and Caius Coll ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Liverpool
Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population of (in ), Liverpool is the administrative, cultural and economic centre of the Liverpool City Region, a combined authority, combined authority area with a population of over 1.5 million. Established as a borough in Lancashire in 1207, Liverpool became significant in the late 17th century when the Port of Liverpool was heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The port also imported cotton for the Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution, Lancashire textile mills, and became a major departure point for English and Irish emigrants to North America. Liverpool rose to global economic importance at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and was home to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, firs ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Free Will Theorem
The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen states that if we have a free will in the sense that our choices are not a function of the past, then, under specific assumptions drawn from quantum mechanics and relativity, so must some elementary particles. That is, if human experimenters possess a form of free will—defined as the ability to make choices not entirely determined by prior events—then certain elementary particles must also exhibit a corresponding form of indeterminacy. The theorem argues that stochastic processes do not satisfy this definition of "freedom," because random values can, in principle, be pre-determined or embedded in the past (for example, sampled from a pre-existing table). Consequently, the theorem implies that no physical theory relying solely on a combination of deterministic laws and pre-existing randomness can fully account for the observed outcomes of quantum measurements. Conway and Kochen's paper was published in ''Foundations o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Nemmers Prize In Mathematics
Larry Nemmers (born July 12, 1943) is a retired educator and better known as a former American football official in the National Football League (NFL). Nemmers made his debut as an NFL official in the 1985 season and continued in this role until the end of the 2007 season. Prior to his officiating career, he was a college football player at Upper Iowa University. Nemmers officiated at Super Bowl XXV, as well as several playoff games. Personal Early years Larry Nemmers, the eldest of nine children, is a native of Waterloo, Iowa and a 1960 graduate of Columbus High School in Waterloo. There he was a good friend of future professional baseball player, Virg Erickson. He later attended Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa, graduating in 1965 with a bachelor's degree in biology. Nemmers also has master's degrees in physics and chemistry, which he received at East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas and in educational administration from Northern Illinois Univers ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Pólya Prize (LMS)
The Pólya Prize is a prize in mathematics, awarded by the London Mathematical Society. Second only to the triennial De Morgan Medal in prestige among the society's awards, it is awarded in the years that are not divisible by three – those in which the De Morgan Medal is not awarded. First given in 1987, the prize is named after Hungarian mathematician George Pólya, who was a member of the society for over 60 years. The prize is awarded "in recognition of outstanding creativity in, imaginative exposition of, or distinguished contribution to, mathematics within the United Kingdom". It cannot be given to anyone who has previously received the De Morgan Medal. List of winners * 1987 John Horton Conway * 1988 C. T. C. Wall * 1990 Graeme B. Segal * 1991 Ian G. Macdonald * 1993 David Rees * 1994 David Williams * 1996 David Edmunds * 1997 John Hammersley * 1999 Simon Donaldson * 2000 Terence Lyons * 2002 Nigel Hitchin * 2003 Angus Macintyre * 2005 Michael Berry * 2006 Peter ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Fellow Of The Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science". Overview Fellowship of the Society, the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour. It has been awarded to :Fellows of the Royal Society, around 8,000 fellows, including eminent scientists Isaac Newton (1672), Benjamin Franklin (1756), Charles Babbage (1816), Michael Faraday (1824), Charles Darwin (1839), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1918), Jagadish Chandra Bose (1920), Albert Einstein (1921), Paul Dirac (1930), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1944), Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1945), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951), Lise Meitner (1955), Satyendra Nath Bose (1958), and Francis Crick (1959). More recently, fellow ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Berwick Prize
The Berwick Prize and Senior Berwick Prize are two prizes of the London Mathematical Society awarded in alternating years in memory of William Edward Hodgson Berwick, a previous Vice-President of the LMS. Berwick left some money to be given to the society to establish two prizes. His widow Daisy May Berwick gave the society the money and the society established the prizes, with the first Senior Berwick Prize being presented in 1946 and the first Junior Berwick Prize the following year. The prizes are awarded "in recognition of an outstanding piece of mathematical research ... published by the Society" in the eight years before the year of the award. The Berwick Prize was known as the Junior Berwick Prize up to 1999, and was given its current name for the 2001 award. Senior Berwick Prize winners Source:List of LMS prize winners
...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark, New Jersey, Newark in 1747 and then to its Mercer County, New Jersey, Mercer County campus in Princeton nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton University. The university is governed by the Trustees of Princeton University and has an endowment of $37.7 billion, the largest List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment, endowment per student in the United States. Princeton provides undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate education, graduate instruction in the hu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

University Of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, world's third-oldest university in continuous operation. The university's founding followed the arrival of scholars who left the University of Oxford for Cambridge after a dispute with local townspeople. The two ancient university, ancient English universities, although sometimes described as rivals, share many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In 1231, 22 years after its founding, the university was recognised with a royal charter, granted by Henry III of England, King Henry III. The University of Cambridge includes colleges of the University of Cambridge, 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and List of institutions of the University of Cambridge#Schools, Faculties, and Departments, over 150 academic departm ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include number theory (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of formulas and related structures), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), Mathematical analysis, analysis (the study of continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics). Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of mathematical object, abstract objects that consist of either abstraction (mathematics), abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicspurely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. Mathematics uses pure reason to proof (mathematics), prove properties of objects, a ''proof'' consisting of a succession of applications of in ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Surreal Number
In mathematics, the surreal number system is a total order, totally ordered proper class containing not only the real numbers but also Infinity, infinite and infinitesimal, infinitesimal numbers, respectively larger or smaller in absolute value than any positive real number. Research on the Go endgame by John Horton Conway led to the original definition and construction of surreal numbers. Conway's construction was introduced in Donald Knuth's 1974 book ''Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned On to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness''. The surreals share many properties with the reals, including the usual arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division); as such, they form an ordered field. If formulated in von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory, the surreal numbers are a universal ordered field in the sense that all other ordered fields, such as the rationals, the reals, the rational functions, the Levi-Civita field, the superreal numbe ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pinwheel Tiling
In geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ..., pinwheel tilings are non-periodic tilings defined by Charles Radin and based on a construction due to John Conway. They are the first known non-periodic tilings to each have the property that their tiles appear in infinitely many orientations. Definition 250px, Conway's triangle decomposition into smaller similar triangles. Let T be the right triangle with side length 1, 2 and \sqrt. Conway noticed that T can be divided in five isometric copies of its image by the dilation of factor 1/\sqrt. 250px, The increasing sequence of triangles which defines Conway's tiling of the plane. 250px, A pinwheel tiling: tiles can be grouped in sets of five (thick lines) to form a new pinwheel tiling (up to rescaling) The pinwhe ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Monstrous Moonshine
In mathematics, monstrous moonshine, or moonshine theory, is the unexpected connection between the monster group ''M'' and modular functions, in particular the ''j'' function. The initial numerical observation was made by John McKay in 1978, and the phrase was coined by John Conway and Simon P. Norton in 1979. The monstrous moonshine is now known to be underlain by a vertex operator algebra called the moonshine module (or monster vertex algebra) constructed by Igor Frenkel, James Lepowsky, and Arne Meurman in 1988, which has the monster group as its group of symmetries. This vertex operator algebra is commonly interpreted as a structure underlying a two-dimensional conformal field theory, allowing physics to form a bridge between two mathematical areas. The conjectures made by Conway and Norton were proven by Richard Borcherds for the moonshine module in 1992 using the no-ghost theorem from string theory and the theory of vertex operator algebras and generalize ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]