Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 758.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
                   Hosted by King's Digital Lab
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2020-04-13 10:17:10+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty 
        Subject: John Conway (1937-2020)

The great and wonderful English mathematician, John Horton Conway,
inventor (among other things) of the Game of Life, died on 11 April from
a swift attack of the Coronavirus. Siobhan Roberts' 2015 biography of
him in The Guardian, online at

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-conway-the-most-
charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world

will give you a good idea of what we have lost and what he has left
behind for us. Her characterisation of him as "Archimedes, Mick Jagger, 
Salvador Dalí, and Richard Feynman, all rolled into one" is much-quoted and 
just about nails it. The story of how he got his first job, at 
Cambridge, provides a much-needed glimpse of how life should be.

Yours,
WM

--
Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/),
Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College
London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
(www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist (www.dhhumanist.org)




_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php

Editor: Willard McCarty (King's College London, U.K.; Western Sydney University, Australia)
Software designer: Malgosia Askanas (Mind-Crafts)

This site is maintained under a service level agreement by King's Digital Lab.