12/04/2020
Ever heard of a tongue gymnast? A lecturer who would eat while lecturing? This kind of weird only suits mathematicians, I would say. Allow me to introduce you to one such.
Exquisitely filthy and in his own ‘state’, as usual(his usual, maybe not ours), the one to whom Wolfrom remarked as the most unsystematic person he has ever met, a prolific developer in recreational math, a genius mathematician, an accomplished fictioneer and the ‘world’s most lovable egomaniac’-
presenting 👉JOHN CONWAY👈
Drawing his inspiration from Coexter- the man who is said to save geometry, he opened my mind to the beauty of Penrose tiling in terms of "darts" and "kites" and happily caught me live with his 24-dimensional Conway group. His greatest worry was that his life will be reduced to LIFE at the end(which is btw a "fantastic solitaire pastime game" as famously noted by Martin Gardner) and an inspiration to many programmers! He calls it a “no-player never-ending game”.
That was where I first learned of how simplicity could generate complexity.
His pinwheel tiling adores the beautiful Atrium Fracture Gallery at Fed Square. He would prefer to spend his summers hopping between various math camps organised for teens.
He had his own madness way of amusing people by his peculiar way of baffling them with simple math games and tricks. He is known for bringing a large turnip and a carved knife to his classes to demonstrate the transforming into an icosahedron, and of course, eating the scraps as he continued. Known for balancing a broom by its handle on his chin while juggling to show in his linear algebra class the doubly tricky proof (for two asymmetric quadratic forms that can be simultaneously diagonalised), as recalled by one of his students Edward Welbourne. "
He was always seen wearing T-shirts with mathsy messages such as “Are you crying? There’s no crying! THERE’S NO CRYING IN MATH CLASS!”
Such incidents inspired the creation of the John Conway Appreciation Society. “He was by far the most charismatic lecturer in the faculty,” said his Cambridge colleague, Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer. “I’m not sure that I can describe how charisma happens. It just is or isn’t. And with most mathematicians, it markedly isn’t.”
If it wasn’t for Matthew, we would never have known him better beyond his invention The Game of LIFE, aptly named surreal numbers, the free will theorem, doomsday trick and thanks to Siobhan we now have “Genius at play: The curious mind of John Horton Conway”.
“Dr. John H Conway sits down at his computer and gets ready to log on. But before the computer allows him to begin work, it quickly spews out 10 randomly selected dates from the past and the future, dates like 3/15/2005 or 4/29/1803. Dr. Conway has to mentally calculate what day of the week each would be before his computer lets him open a file and get to work. It is a game he has rigged up to play with himself”, as remarked by a New York Times reporter.
As he put it, “Math was always there for me”. It provided him with peace and pleasure. As an epigram in his biography advises, borrowing from Oscar Wilde: “Life is far too important to be taken seriously.”
His biography is a must-read for any math enthusiast. For more into his work- I would recommend the book- “Symmetry and the Monster: One of the greatest quests of mathematics”.
There is much more to John than anyone can ever write! He has reportedly died today due to COVID-19, which is quite sad and is true as confirmed by his brother-in-law!
RIP Dr.John Conway
