Genius at Play
Presents the life and accomplishments of the mathematician who inveted game theory, focusing on his quirky and nontraditional methods of teaching at Princeton University.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
11mentions
10people
2015–2025years
82% recommend18% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I was suffering from a burnout for much of the year and read mostly to relax. Reread a bunch of Discworld and read most of the Expanse series for the first time. Some Murakami. The Conway biography ("Genius At Play"), also a reread because it's fun.
But "The Dream Machine: JCR Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal", often recommended om HN, was amazing. It has so much of the history of how personal computers came to be, and so much that was new to me.
- Not really a math book but I really enjoyed "Genius At Play", a biography of John H. Conway.
Also anything from Raymond Smullyan (logic musings/riddles).
- Some "pop"-sci books that have inspired me:
1."Uncle Petros & Goldback's Conjecture" & "Logicomix" (both by Apostolos Doxiadis),
2."Chaos" by James Gleick,
3. "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers" by Paul Hoffman
4. "A Mathematician's Apology" by G.H. Hardy
5. "The Indian Clerk" (fiction) by David Leavitt (about GH Hardy & Ramanujan)
6. "Genius at Play" by Siobhan Roberts (about John Conway). Normally I stay away from pop-math books with the words "The mind of..." or "Genius" in the title but this is a delightful book.
Some "actual" math books: 1. Nonlinear Dynamics & Chaos (Strogatz)
2. the Way of Analysis (Strichartz) -- note, this one is controversial as to its quality as a math book but I really like the presentation style
3. The Nature of Computation (Moore & Mertens)
- I recommend Dyson's Maker of Patterns[0] autobiography told primarily through his letters to his family throughout his life. Includes great stories about Feynman, Oppenheimer, other heavy-hitters of mid-century physics. The format was surprisingly narrative, makes me wish I wrote as many personal longer-form letters with family and friends.
Also Siobhan Roberts' biography of Conway, Genius at Play[1], told another great story. Low on math content but Conway's personality and the narrators attempts to corral it were quick fun.
Both are recommended. Does anyone have recommendation for a popular-science level book on Graham? I'm only familiar with him from the Numberphile video series.
[0] https://www.harvard.com/book/maker_of_patterns_an_autobiogra...
[1] short snippet from it https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/roberts-john-horton-conway
- I recommend Dyson's Maker of Patterns[0] autobiography told primarily through his letters to his family throughout his life. Includes great stories about Feynman, Oppenheimer, other heavy-hitters of mid-century physics. The format was surprisingly narrative, makes me wish I wrote as many personal longer-form letters with family and friends. Also Siobhan Roberts' biography of Conway, Genius at Play[1], told another great story. Low on math content but Conway's personality and the narrators attempts to corral it were quick fun.
Both are recommended. Does anyone have recommendation for a popular-science level book on Graham? I'm only familiar with him from the Numberphile video series.
[0] https://www.harvard.com/book/maker_of_patterns_an_autobiogra...
[1] short snippet from it https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/roberts-john-horton-conway
- The April Fool's piece from a few years ago mentions that there is a biography, which was published as "Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway" by Siobhan Roberts. I'm sure that would be a good read.
