John Conway Passed away due to COVID19.

[BrianHG]

No.... 

His "Game Of Life" was a truly revolutionary inventive vision in 1970 which created a 2D universe in a computer which could create life forms which can be manipulated to do almost anything.

Rest in peace John Conway.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/john-conway-inventor-of-the-game-of-life-has-died-of-covid-19/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway

[joeqsmith]

A pretty good book about that era is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution

Life running on some home made hardware.
https://youtu.be/5OUfx2F43ek?t=509

[NivagSwerdna]

Sad news indeed.  I learnt how to solve the Rubriks cube from a paper by Conway.  (None of that Singmaster rubbish).  [also wrote a Life implement for the PET whilst at school in 6502 assembler]

[spudboy488]

A pretty good book about that era is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution

A very good read. 

[Skashkash]

I have memories of doing Conway's Game of Life game on an Othello game board "by hand" with my dad back in the early 70's. This was after reading about it in Martin Gardener's column in Scientific American.     

Then years later, learning computers and running GOL on a TRS-80.  The last time I coded a version of Life was in assembly on an AVR.

Truly great stuff and a very influential man.   

[thinkfat]

This makes me sad. I did a project last year, creating a distributed "Game of Life" board out of individual 8x8 LED matrix displays.

https://youtu.be/-deEdpXH00Y

[MK14]

R.I.P.

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[mathsquid]

I met John Conway at a conference when I was a graduate student in the late 90s. A bunch of us were at a party one night at a faculty member's house, and Conway was sitting at a coffee table with a pen and paper, and a bunch of checkers. He showed us several different combinatorial games. He was a great guy, a lot of fun, and very approachable.

This hurts, especially after losing Freeman Dyson a month or so ago.

[Sredni]

So, in the end he became a number.
(even if ìn the death stats)

I loved his "Book of Numbers".
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387979939