COVID-19 has just recently taken the life of a Princeton mathematician by the name of John Conway according to a Twitter post. The 82 year old from Princeton University has contributed in various areas of mathematics but is best known for his invention of the Conway's Game of Life.
The Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automata in which simple rules direct surprisingly complex behaviors. This invention was made famous by a 1970 Scientific American article and has been living in the community ever since. P.S. Do not confuse with the Milton Bradley's board game of the same name.
How does the Game of Life work?
Conway's Game of Life is played on an easy two-dimensional plane with several square cells. Each square can either be a black or white whereas black represents being alive and white represents being dead. The simple rules dictate how the state of the game goes from one step to another.
If a single live square has two or three live neighbors, it stays alive. If a dead cell has three different live neighbors, it then becomes alive!
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The rules were developed back in late 1960s right before the personal computer was invented. Conway was previously performing experiments on a Go board and has discovered that these rules result to surprisingly complex behaviors!
Shortly after, the software to accelerate the runs of the Game of Life were finally written.
The brilliance of the game
The game was created with much brilliance as mathematicians over the world were discovering certain sequences and effects. A certain video shows just how an irregular system functions in the Game of Life.
After more than 50 years since Conway's invention of the Game of Life, the game still continues to have a significant archive with both professional mathematicians as well as amateurs. The Conwaylife.com website has a whole Wiki list of hundreds of discovered patterns in the Game of Life while thousands have also been posted to its forum.
If you're interested in trying out the Web-based game of life implementation that will allow you to try out certain experimental patterns, click here. If you decide to go even deeper and would probably want to download the Gam of Life software packages, it's all freely available online.
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The death of John Conway is a huge loss
The coronavirus has no preference and has been targeting just about everybody as people from all walks of life start to die left and right. John Conway's contribution to the mathematics community is met with much respect and reverence and now that he has passed, the mathematics community remembers his contribution through the creation of the Game of Life.
The best thing people can do to avoid even more deaths from the coronavirus is to practice proper social distancing and avoid going out unless absolutely necessary.
