PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

John Horton Conway

Also known as John Conway

John Horton Conway was a Liverpool-born mathematician whose Game of Life, devised in 1970, became the first popular artificial life simulation based on cellular automata. Built on ideas John von Neumann developed in the 1940s, the game ran a few simple rules on a grid of square cells and turned out to be Turing complete. After a 1964 Cambridge doctorate under Harold Davenport, he discovered the Conway groups, conjectured Monstrous Moonshine with Simon Norton in 1979 and set out the foundations of combinatorial game theory in On Numbers and Games. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1981 with a nomination that cited his work on automata theory, he held Princeton's John von Neumann professorship from 1987 until he became emeritus in 2013. He died of complications related to COVID-19 in 2020.

Born
1937
Died
2020
Badges

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1937–1964

    Cambridge degrees under Davenport

    Born in Liverpool in 1937, he studies mathematics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and earns a BA in 1959. Supervised by Harold Davenport, he completes his doctorate in 1964 and becomes a lecturer in pure mathematics at Cambridge.

  2. 1966–1969

    The Conway groups

    In 1966, at John McKay's urging, he sets out to find the symmetry group of the Leech lattice and calculates it in about 24 hours. The symmetries, now known as the Conway group, include previously unknown finite simple groups; he announces the discovery in 1968 and publishes full details in 1969.

  3. 1970

    The Game of Life

    Building on ideas John von Neumann developed in the 1940s, he devises the Game of Life in 1970, a grid of square cells that interact with their neighbours by a few simple rules. Martin Gardner introduces it in Scientific American in October 1970, and it becomes the first popular artificial life simulation based on cellular automata. The game is Turing complete and helps launch the field of cellular automata.

  4. 1971–1981

    Finite machines and the Royal Society

    In 1971, he publishes the book Regular Algebra and Finite Machines and receives the London Mathematical Society's Berwick Prize. He is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1981; his nomination cites contributions to mathematical logic, including automata theory, and to the theory of games.

  5. 1976–1982

    Co-founding combinatorial game theory

    He discovers the surreal numbers while analysing the game of Go, and in 1976 he publishes On Numbers and Games, which lays out the mathematical foundations of combinatorial game theory. With Elwyn Berlekamp and Richard Guy, he coauthors Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays in 1982.

  6. 1979

    Monstrous Moonshine with Norton

    In a 1979 paper, he and his former PhD student Simon Norton conjecture Monstrous Moonshine, a link between the monster group and the j-function in number theory. Richard Borcherds, another of his former students, proves the conjecture and wins a Fields Medal in 1998.

  7. 1987–2013

    John von Neumann Professor at Princeton

    He joins Princeton's faculty in 1987 as the John von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics and holds the chair until he becomes emeritus in 2013. He wins the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics in 1998 and the American Mathematical Society's Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition in 2000. In 2004, he and Simon Kochen prove the Free Will Theorem of quantum mechanics.

  8. 2020

    Death from COVID-19

    He dies of complications related to COVID-19 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in April 2020, at 82.

Career

  1. 1987–2020Princeton UniversityJohn von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Professor Emeritus
  2. From 1964University of CambridgeLecturer in Pure Mathematics

Education

  1. 1964University of CambridgePhD
  2. 1959Gonville and Caius CollegeBA

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Princeton University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Princeton University. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Cambridge. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of Cambridge. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. John Conway (1937 - 2020) - Biography - MacTutor History of Mathematics mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. John Conway Solved Mathematical Problems With His Bare Hands | Quanta Magazine quantamagazine.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. John Horton Conway - Princeton obituary - MacTutor History of Mathematics mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Conway from FOLDOC foldoc.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. John Horton Conway - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. John Conway Dies From Coronavirus i-programmer.info. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. John Horton Conway obituary | Mathematics | The Guardian theguardian.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. John H. Conway, 1937–2020 | Math math.princeton.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.