The Game of Life was invented by the Cambridge mathematican John H. Conway in the late 1960s.
John Conway (1937- ) attended Cambridge University where he studied number theory and logic, and later joined the mathematics faculty.
Conway focused his attention there on a theoretical lattice that extends into 24 dimensions. He discovered a new finite group ( the set of symmetris of a geometric object).
He was also investigating the idea of a universal constructor, as first studied by the American mathematican John von Neumann in the 1940s. The universal constructor is a theorerical machine that can build copies of itself. Von Neumann created a mathematical model for such a machine, using a Cartesian grid as his foundation.
Conway simplified the model, and it became what we now know of as the Game of Life.
John Conway showed the Game of Life to his friend Martin Gardner, a longtime columnist in Scientific American. Gardner described the game in his mathematical games column in the October 1970 issue.
Since then the Game's popularity has continued to grow...