St. Bonaventure University Department of Mathematics

CONWAY’S CAFÉ: The Game of Life! To honor mathematician extraordinaire John Conway, who passed away in April, we launch with this post Conway’s Café, wherein from time to time we savor a delicious serving from Conway’s mathematical smorgasbord. Today we highlight Conway’s Game of Life, the discovery for which he’s most famous (although he was not entirely happy about that). The Game of Life is a cellular automaton which begins with a configuration of live cells in a grid..., and then proceeds according to certain rules that determine which cells live, die, or multiply. Conway arrived at the rules through considerable experimentation, and they permit some surprising, even astonishing, long-term behaviors. Conway discusses his creation in the Numberphile video below. YOU can play the Game of Life at https://bitstorm.org/gameoflife/. This site allows you to either select a starting configuration of cells from a menu or create your own. Then you can watch the configuration evolve over time. Try it and see! (The site lists Conway’s rules, and the menu includes a lovely tribute to the man himself.) Coming up on CONWAY’S CAFÉ: a CONTEST involving the Game of Life. See more

Congratulations to our newest graduates, Ethan McKeone and Spencer Mummery, Class of 2020! Ethan received a B.S. with a Major in Adolescence Education and a Concentration in Mathematics and Spencer received a B.S. with a Major in Mathematics. Since there was no physical ceremony this year, we asked Ethan and Spencer to provide photos for our Commencement 2020 album. Ethan and Spencer are also the co-winners of the Mathematics Award. The Mathematics Award is given to the seniors who, upon the recommendation of the Department of Mathematics, have demonstrated general excellence in mathematics throughout their undergraduate careers. We’ve greatly enjoyed getting to know the both of you, it’s been a privilege being part of your educations, and we wish you all the best!

We lost last month one of mathematics’ brightest lights. John Conway died on April 11 of complications from the coronavirus. Conway, the world’s most charismatic mathematician, contributed to group theory, number theory, knot theory, coding theory, game theory, recreational mathematics, and numerous other areas. He was perhaps best known for his Game of Life and surreal numbers. The article below is a 2015 Guardian long read on Conway's remarkable life and career. And here's a recent article that shares two of Conway’s favorite puzzles: https://www.theguardian.com//can-you-solve-it-john-horton-.

Congratulations to Spencer Mummery, class of 2020, for his successful senior mathematics presentation! Earlier today Spencer presented his project, Cryptography and the RSA Algorithm, to faculty and students in our first ever socially-distanced event. The mentor for the project was Dr. Hill. Spencer began with a brief history of cryptography and the advent of public-key cryptography. (Some say that Spencer bears a striking resemblance to a young Whitfield Diffie, coinventor o...f the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, an important precursor to RSA.) He then focused on the mathematics of the RSA cryptosystem, including the related topics of primality testing and factoring. Spencer concluded by describing some vulnerabilities of RSA. Notes of congratulations may be sent to Spencer using the encryption key (e, N) = (65537, 17962702577299907649528587218742547085624543). See more

To celebrate the 335th anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach (using the O.S. date), we highlight Douglas Hofstadter's glorious book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Hofstadter's Pulitzer prize-winning work weaves together themes including Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, the art of M.C. Escher, and Bach’s music. As an example of the latter, enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doJ2Fd6JRpQ. #Amazon