John Horton Conway

A British mathematician who loved games, knots, and surreal numbers. In 1970 he invented the Game of Life (three rules on a grid, played out in turns) and watched it produce things that looked alive: oscillators, gliders, even patterns that simulated other patterns. The game was so simple and so deep that mathematicians worldwide spent years exploring it. Conway later said he sometimes wished he were known for his other discoveries instead, but the Game of Life had a magic that wouldn't let him go.