John Horton Conway, mathematician and inventor of Conway's Game of Life has been reported by a colleague to have died from COVID-19 at the age of 82. Conway's death has also been reported (in Italian) by the Italian website "MaddMaths!".
From Wikipedia:
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. The game is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves. It is Turing complete and can simulate a universal constructor or any other Turing machine.
Many different types of patterns occur in the Game of Life, which are classified according to their behaviour. Common pattern types include: still lifes, which do not change from one generation to the next; oscillators, which return to their initial state after a finite number of generations; and spaceships, which translate themselves across the grid.
Rest In Peace, John.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday April 12 2020, @07:00PM (3 children)
Yeah there's discussion [reddit.com] going on online about sources [wikipedia.org]. I wasn't certain but with his colleague, and a claim of his wife, reporting it, combined with some mentions in newspapers, I figured it was worth breaking the story here. The other tech sites I looked at don't seem to have picked up on it yet.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday April 12 2020, @09:07PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday April 13 2020, @04:56AM (1 child)
It's called "Plague, Inc" .
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 13 2020, @04:34PM
It will need a more marketable name than COVID-19.
I propose: The Trump Virus
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.