ложь, всё ложь, говорит Конвей
He remembers Conway putting on a good show during a lecture at MIT’s 1000-seat Kresge Auditorium. Fielding questions from the audience afterward, Conway hunted frantically for an unused transparency to illustrate an answer. Failing, he made do by licking a marked-up transparency clean. This display of reckless spontaneity won converts and spawned legends. But, as Berlekamp tells it, the spontaneity was calculated. Someone had spotted Conway practicing licking transparencies clean in advance (lies, all lies, says Conway).
О нём, Шивон Робертс, «Гений в игре»
Конвей, Джон Хортон знаменитые цитаты
Конвей всегда рассматривал его как образец для подражания
When Cantor proposed his theory of the infinite he was called a scientific charlatan, a renegade, and a corrupter of youth (Conway has always considered him a role model).
О нём, Шивон Робертс, «Гений в игре»
he made what he calls “The Vow”: “Thou shalt stop worrying and feeling guilty; thou shalt do whatever thou pleasest.”
О нём, Шивон Робертс, «Гений в игре»
Coxeter’s reply, deliriously received and dearly cherished, has since gone the way of many things that really matter to Conway: lost.
О нём, Шивон Робертс, «Гений в игре»
Конвей, Джон Хортон цитаты
Guy introduced him to Conway at a number theory conference in Oxford in 1969. They played hooky and spent 10 hours at a pub playing games. As Berlekamp recalls, neither of them could ever prevail at a game the other had invented, but each of them always had more games up his own sleeve that only the inventor could win.
О нём, Шивон Робертс, «Гений в игре»
He’s got his high-mathematical-mastery-inaccessible-exoskeleton mode, and to be sure when he’s in that mode he’s hard to reach. He can also come down to earth with treats for mere mortals.
О нём, Шивон Робертс, «Гений в игре»
I do have a big ego! As I often say, modesty is my only vice. If I weren’t so modest, I’d be perfect.
Источник: Siobhan Roberts. Genius At Play. The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway. — Bloomsbury USA, 2015. — ISBN 9781620405932.
Конвей, Джон Хортон: Цитаты на английском языке
[Mark Ronan, Symmetry and the Monster: One of the greatest quests of mathematics, http://books.google.com/books?id=wDjD0PowhIwC&pg=PT163, 18 May 2006, Oxford University Press, UK, 978-0-19-157938-7, 163]
[Life, Death and the Monster - Numberphile, 9 May 2014, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCe5HUObD4]