John Horton Conway

John Horton Conway Biography
Mathematician, Professor, Academic, Author (1937–)
British mathematician John Horton Conway has earned fame for his contributions to group, game and number theory as well as his dynamic lectures.

Synopsis
Born in England in 1937, John Horton Conway began his mathematics career at Cambridge University. By the 1970s, he was known for his discoveries of the Leech lattice symmetry group and surreal numbers, along with his creation of the Game of Life. Conway later moved to a high-profile position at Princeton University, where he continued his pursuits in such areas as sphere packing, game theory and theoretical physics.

Early Years and Education
John Horton Conway was born on December 26, 1937, in Liverpool, England. The third child of parents Agnes and Cyril, Horton demonstrated remarkable math prowess early in his life; by age 4, he was reciting the powers of 2.

Aiming to become a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, Conway was a star math pupil at Liverpool's Holt High School for Boys. However, he was also a painfully shy introvert. After being accepted to Cambridge, the school of his dreams, he decided to overcome his social inhibitions and developed a more outgoing personality.

Conway earned his B.A. in mathematics at Cambridge's Gonville and Caius College in 1959, and embarked on graduate studies in number theory. During this time he married his first wife, teacher Eileen Howe, and developed his longtime interest in games. Upon earning his doctorate in 1964, he was named lecturer in pure mathematics at Cambridge and earned a fellowship at Sidney Sussex College.