| Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway (Bloomsbury) |
| Sunday, 13 March 2016 | |||
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John Horton Conway, who is in today's news for having set a maths challenge to celebrate Pi Day, is decribed by his biographer, Siobhan Roberts, as Archimedes, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, and Richard Feynman all rolled into one--a singular mathematician, with a rock star's charisma, a sly sense of humor, a polymath's promiscuous curiosity, and a burning desire to explain everything about the world to everyone in it. <ASIN:1620405954> Born in Liverpool in 1937, Conway found fame as a barefoot Cambridge professor. He discovered the Conway groups in mathematical symmetry, and invented the aptly named surreal numbers, as well as the cult classic Game of Life--more than a cool fad, Life demonstrates how simplicity generates complexity and the game provides an analogy for all mathematics and the entire universe. Moving to Princeton in 1987, as a mathemagician he deployed cards, ropes, dice, coat hangers, and even the odd Slinky as props to extend his winning imagination and share his mathy obsessions with signature contagion. He is a jet-setting ambassador-at-large for the beauties of all things mathematical.
Author: Siobhan Roberts Visit Book Watch Archive for hundreds more titles. Follow @bookwatchiprog on Twitter or subscribe to I Programmer's Books RSS feed for each day's new addition to Book Watch and for new reviews. To have new titles included in Book Watch contact BookWatch@i-programmer.info 
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