John Horton Conway was an English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life.
In the area of abstract algebra known as group theory, the monster group M (also known as the Fischer–Griess monster, or the friendly giant) is the largest sporadic simple group, having order
246 · 320 · 59 · 76 · 112 · 133 · 17 · 19 · 23 · 29 · 31 · 41 · 47 · 59 · 71
= 808,017,424,794,512,875,886,459,904,961,710,757,005,754,368,000,000,000
≈ 8×1053.
Stephen Richard "Steve" Bourne is an English computer scientist based in the United States for most of his career. He is well known as the author of the Bourne shell (sh), which is the foundation for the standard command-line interfaces to Unix.
Geometry of numbers is the part of number theory which uses geometry for the study of algebraic numbers. Typically, a ring of algebraic integers is viewed as a lattice in and the study of these lattices provides fundamental information on algebraic numbers. The geometry of numbers was initiated by Hermann Minkowski (1910).
Combinatorial game theory is a branch of mathematics and theoretical computer science that typically studies sequential games with perfect information. Study has been largely confined to two-player games that have a position that the players take turns changing in defined ways or moves to achieve a defined winning condition. Combinatorial game theory has not traditionally studied games of chance or those that use imperfect or incomplete information, favoring games that offer perfect information in which the state of the game and the set of available moves is always known by both players. However, as mathematical techniques advance, the types of game that can be mathematically analyzed expands, thus the boundaries of the field are ever changing. Scholars will generally define what they mean by a "game" at the beginning of a paper, and these definitions often vary as they are specific to the game being analyzed and are not meant to represent the entire scope of the field.
In mathematics, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture describes the set of rational solutions to equations defining an elliptic curve. It is an open problem in the field of number theory and is widely recognized as one of the most challenging mathematical problems. It is named after mathematicians Bryan John Birch and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, who developed the conjecture during the first half of the 1960s with the help of machine computation. As of 2023, only special cases of the conjecture have been proven.
Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Berlekamp was widely known for his work in computer science, coding theory and combinatorial game theory.
Richard Kenneth Guy was a British mathematician. He was a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Calgary. He is known for his work in number theory, geometry, recreational mathematics, combinatorics, and graph theory. He is best known for co-authorship of Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays and authorship of Unsolved Problems in Number Theory. He published more than 300 scholarly articles. Guy proposed the partially tongue-in-cheek "strong law of small numbers", which says there are not enough small integers available for the many tasks assigned to them – thus explaining many coincidences and patterns found among numerous cultures. For this paper he received the MAA Lester R. Ford Award.
CPL is a multi-paradigm programming language developed in the early 1960s. It is an early ancestor of the C language via the BCPL and B languages.
The Cambridge CAP computer was the first successful experimental computer that demonstrated the use of security capabilities, both in hardware and software. It was developed at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in the 1970s. Unlike most research machines of the time, it was also a useful service machine.
ALGOL 68C is an imperative computer programming language, a dialect of ALGOL 68, that was developed by Stephen R. Bourne and Michael Guy to program the Cambridge Algebra System (CAMAL). The initial compiler was written in the Princeton Syntax Compiler that was implemented by J. H. Mathewman at Cambridge.
In number theory and algebraic geometry, a rational point of an algebraic variety is a point whose coordinates belong to a given field. If the field is not mentioned, the field of rational numbers is generally understood. If the field is the field of real numbers, a rational point is more commonly called a real point.
Robert Arnott Wilson is a retired mathematician in London, England, who is best known for his work on classifying the maximal subgroups of finite simple groups and for the work in the Monster group. He is also an accomplished violin, viola and piano player, having played as the principal viola in the Sinfonia of Birmingham. Due to a damaged finger, he now principally plays the kora.
Barnette's conjecture is an unsolved problem in graph theory, a branch of mathematics, concerning Hamiltonian cycles in graphs. It is named after David W. Barnette, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis; it states that every bipartite polyhedral graph with three edges per vertex has a Hamiltonian cycle.
Cambridge Algebra System (CAMAL) is a computer algebra system written in Cambridge University by David Barton, Steve Bourne, and John Fitch. It was initially used for computations in celestial mechanics and general relativity. The foundation code was written in Titan computer assembler,. In 1973, when Titan was replaced with an IBM370/85, it was rewritten in ALGOL 68C and then BCPL where it could run on IBM mainframes and assorted microcomputers.
Patrick Michael Grundy was an English mathematician and statistician. He was one of the eponymous co-discoverers of the Sprague–Grundy function and its application to the analysis of a wide class of combinatorial games.
Thomas K. Porter is the senior vice president of production strategy at Pixar and one of the studio's founding employees.
