According to the official news of the European Mathematical Society. John conway, a famous mathematician and professor at Princeton University and Cambridge University, died on April 1 1 at the age of 82. \r

John horton conway, a famous contemporary British mathematician, once said: "Maybe you don't have to believe in God, but you must believe in mathematics;" No matter how you argue, you can't prove that two plus two is not equal to four, and it will never be equal to five. I choose things that everyone thinks are complicated and prove that they are not. I have changed my destination. Once, I thought I was a world-class mathematician, but I gradually became lazy and lacked knowledge. Now I am just trying to make everything appear in front of everyone in the simplest form. " \r

Childhood with a wide range of interests \r

Conway became interested in mathematics when he was a child. At the age of four, he could recite the powers of 2: 1, 2,22 = 4,23 = 8,16,32, ... until 1024. \r

In senior three, he trained himself to calculate quickly. He later recalled: "At that time, if you asked me what 65 1 multiplied by 347 was? I can give the correct answer in a few seconds. " In order to improve the ability of quick calculation, he trained to enhance his memory. He once recited pi = 3. 14 15926 ... until the decimal point became 1000. \r

Knotting expert \r

Conway became interested in knots when he was in middle school. He collected all kinds of strange knots. \r

Conway said: "The knot problem is essentially a mathematical problem." When he was in Cambridge, he wrote an important mathematical paper on knots, the main idea of which came from the concept in middle school. Later, he also compiled a knot collection to collect all kinds of knots. \r

Knots are related to topology and group theory in mathematics. Some American knot theorists made a special trip to Britain to ask Conway for advice. He usually scribbles some formulas on paper during the discussion, which often leads to some unexpected results. These experts have some problems that Conway can often solve easily. \r

A simple group is a simple group with only two normal subgroups. They are like elementary particles in the nucleus, but it is not easy to find new finite simple groups. In the late 1960s, Conway was lucky to discover three finite simple groups, which were named Conway simple groups by mathematicians. \r

Conway's monogroup belongs to 26 famous "sporadic groups". The latest random simple group was discovered by R. Grìess of the University of Michigan at 1980. Conway nicknamed it "monster" because of its huge structure, and everyone has quoted this name since then. It represents the rotation in the 196883 dimensional space, which can confuse ordinary mathematicians, but Conway said: "No one can deny that the' monster' is a very attractive abstract structure. Imagine a diamond in the 196883 dimensional space, which has 1054 axes and rotation centers, and still shows its symmetry and uniformity. Anyone who can imagine anything in this 196883 dimensional space will be sincerely amazed, and you can imagine it in your mind at any time. I was really shocked by it and felt that it would play a prominent role in the real world ... Maybe this will be an important tool for basic particle theory. " \r

Founder of "Game of Life" \r

1970, Conway put forward the "life game", which was once a sensation. Not only some ordinary people are playing with it, but also some famous mathematicians and computer experts like it. Someone once joked: "A quarter of the computers in the world are running the' life game' program."