![]() This work by Conway was to transform his mathematical career. Ī detailed description of this discovery is given in. I dangled the problem under various noses, including those of Coxeter, Todd, and Graham Higman, but Conway was the first to swallow the bait. Knowing that he did not have the group theory skills necessary to prove his conjectures he tried to interest others, see :. Leech knew that the symmetry group would be interesting, and he worked on it for some time giving a lower bound for its order (which later proved to be the actual order of the group ). Around 1965 John Leech found a dense packing of spheres in 24 dimensions with a lattice now known as the Leech lattice. Things were to change suddenly for Conway. I felt that I wasn't doing real mathematics I hadn't published, and I was feeling very guilty because of that. At this stage he was working on mathematical logic but things were not going well. He had achieved the ambition which he had as an eleven year old.Īlso in 1964 Conway was elected to a fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He was awarded his doctorate in 1964 and was appointed as Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. It appears that his interest in games began during his years studying at Cambridge, where he became an avid backgammon player spending hours playing the game in the common room. Having solved the open problem posed by Davenport on writing numbers as the sums of fifth powers, Conway began to become interested in infinite ordinals. He was awarded his BA in 1959 and began to undertake research in number theory supervised by Harold Davenport. The interest in astronomy has remained with him and he lists it as one of his interests today.Īfter leaving seconday school, Conway entered Gonville and Caius College Cambridge to study mathematics. Mathematics was not the only subject which interested him, however, for he also had spells of deep interest in astronomy and at other times in fossils. He excelled at secondary school, not in all his subjects but certainly his performance in mathematics was by far the best of any of the pupils. When he went to be interviewed at age eleven before entering secondary school he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up and he replied that he wanted to be a mathematician at Cambridge. ![]() At primary school John was outstanding and he topped almost every class.ĭespite not having any clear idea of what mathematics was when he was at primary school, John Conway must have had it firmly fixed in his mind that he would become a mathematician. John's young years were difficult for he grew up in Britain at a time of wartime shortages. ![]() John became interested in mathematics at a very early age and his mother Agnes recalled that he could recite the powers of two when aged four years. Cyril Conway was a chemistry laboratory assistant. John had two older sisters, Sylvia and Joan. Biography John Conway's parents were Agnes Boyce and Cyril Horton Conway. ![]()
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