Editing John Horton Conway (section)

==Early life and education==
Conway was born on 26 December 1937 in [[Liverpool]], the son of Cyril Horton Conway and Agnes Boyce.<ref name="mactutor" /><ref name="whoswho">{{cite web |url=http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U11688 |title=CONWAY, Prof. John Horton |work=Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press }}{{subscription required}}</ref> He became interested in mathematics at a very early age. By the time he was 11, his ambition was to become a mathematician.<ref>{{cite web|title=John Horton Conway|website=Dean of the Faculty, Princeton University|url=https://dof.princeton.edu/about/clerk-faculty/emeritus/john-horton-conway|access-date=3 November 2020|archive-date=16 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190316023012/https://dof.princeton.edu/about/clerk-faculty/emeritus/john-horton-conway|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="frontiers">{{cite book|title=Mathematical Frontiers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gmCSpNhXMooC&pg=PA38 | page=38 | publisher=Infobase Publishing | year = 2006 | isbn=978-0-7910-9719-9}}</ref> After leaving [[sixth form]], he studied mathematics at [[Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge]].<ref name="whoswho"/> A "terribly introverted adolescent" in school, he took his admission to Cambridge as an opportunity to transform himself into an extrovert, a change which would later earn him the nickname of "the world's most charismatic mathematician".<ref name=Guardian>{{cite news|last1=Roberts|first1=Siobhan|author-link=Siobhan Roberts|title=John Horton Conway: the world's most charismatic mathematician|url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-conway-the-most-charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|date=23 July 2015}}</ref><ref name="Ronan2006">{{cite book|author=Mark Ronan|title=Symmetry and the Monster: One of the greatest quests of mathematics|url=https://archive.org/details/symmetrymonstero0000rona|url-access=registration|date=18 May 2006|publisher=Oxford University Press, UK|isbn=978-0-19-157938-7|pages=[https://archive.org/details/symmetrymonstero0000rona/page/163 163]|author-link=Mark Ronan}}</ref>

Conway was awarded a [[Bachelor of Arts|BA]] in 1959 and, supervised by [[Harold Davenport]], began to undertake research in number theory. Having solved the open problem posed by Davenport on [[Waring's problem|writing numbers as the sums of fifth powers]], Conway became interested in infinite ordinals.<ref name="frontiers" /> It appears that his interest in games began during his years studying the [[Cambridge Mathematical Tripos]], where he became an avid [[backgammon]] player, spending hours playing the game in the common room.<ref name="mactutor" />

In 1964, Conway was awarded his doctorate and was appointed as College Fellow and Lecturer in Mathematics at [[Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge]].<ref name="genealogy">{{cite book|author=Sooyoung Chang|year=2011|title = Academic Genealogy of Mathematicians | publisher = World Scientific | page=205 | isbn=978-981-4282-29-1}}</ref>

After leaving Cambridge in 1986, he took up the appointment to the [[John von Neumann]] Chair of Mathematics at Princeton University.<ref name="genealogy" /> There, he won the Princeton University [[Pi Day]] pie-eating contest.<ref>{{Cite magazine |title=This Is How the Number 3.14 Got the Name 'Pi' |url=https://time.com/4699479/pi-day-history-origins/ |access-date=2022-09-21 |magazine=Time |language=en}}</ref>