Genius at Play

"Conway is a creative genius."- Martin Gardner

An unabashed original, John Horton Conway is Archimedes, Mick Jagger, SalvadorDali, and Richard Feynman all rolled into one-a singular mathematician, with arock star's charisma, a sly sense of humor, a polymath's promiscuouscuriosity, and a burning desire to explain everything about the world toeveryone in it.

Born in Liverpool in 1937, Conway found fame as a barefoot Cambridgeprofessor. He discovered the Conway groups in mathematical symmetry, andinvented the aptly named surreal numbers, as well as the cult classic Game ofLife-more than a cool fad, Life demonstrates how simplicity generatescomplexity and the game provides an analogy for all mathematics and the entireuniverse. Moving to Princeton in 1987, as a mathemagician he deployed cards,ropes, dice, coat hangers, and even the odd Slinky as props to extend hiswinning imagination and share his mathy obsessions with signature contagion.He is a jet-setting ambassador-at-large for the beauties of all thingsmathematical.

Genius At Play is an intimate investigation into the mind of an endearinggenius, laying bare Conway's personal and professional idiosyncrasies. Theintimacy comes courtesy of the man himself. He generously granted Roberts fullaccess, though not without the occasional grudge and grumble: "Oh hell," he'dsay. "You're not going to put that in the book. Are you?!?"