Winnerof the 2017 JPBM Communications Award for Expository and Popular Books.
“A delightful meta-biography--playful indeed--of a brilliant iconoclast.” --James Gleick, author ofThe Information
John Horton Conway is a singular mathematician with a lovely loopy brain. He is Archimedes, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, and Richard Feynman all rolled into one--he boasts a rock star’s charisma, a slyly bent sense of humor, a polymath’s promiscuous curiosity, and an insatiable compulsion to explain everything about the world to everyone in it. At Cambridge, Conway wrestled with "Monstrous Moonshine," discovered the aptly named surreal numbers, and invented the cult classic Game of Life--more than just a cool fad, Life demonstrates how simplicity generates complexity and provides an analogy for mathematics and the entire universe. As a "mathemagician" at Princeton, he used ropes, dice, pennies, coat hangers, even the occasional Slinky, as props to extend his winning imagination and share his many nerdish delights. He granted Roberts full access to his idiosyncrasies and intellect both, though not without the occasional grumble: "Oh hell," he’d say. "You’re not going to put that in the book. Are you?!?"

Siobhan Roberts has written for The Walrus, Toronto Life, Canadian Geographic, Saturday Night, and the Globe and Mail. She has won two National Magazine Awards, one for her profile of Coxeter in Toronto Life.

Siobhan Roberts' profile page

"Genius At Play is a portrait of one creative genius by another. Absolutely brilliant. Impossible to put down." —Sylvia Nasar, author of A BEAUTIFUL MIND and GRAND PURSUIT
"A triumph." —Graham Farmelo, author of THE STRANGEST MAN
"John Horton Conway [is] perhaps the greatest living genius unknown to the general public." —starred review,Publishers Weekly
"Roberts's new biography of Conway demonstrates how the man's playfulness and originality has fed into the creativity and intelligence of his ideas." —Scientific American
"A delightful meta-biography--playful indeed--of a brilliant iconoclast." —James Gleick, author of THE INFORMATION and CHAOS
"Genius At Play is noteworthy for many reasons, among them the non-negligible fact of being a biography of a living subject--a task generally self-defeating . . . and rarely approached with as much tenacious graciousness as Roberts’s. [A] tremendous read in its totality." —Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
"Conway [is] himself such an unusual and special mathematician, deserving of the thoughtful account Ms. Roberts gives of his life and of his mind." —The Wall Street Journal
"A fascinating read from start to finish . . . never gets bogged down in mathematical detail, yet it conveys much of the unstoppable excitement of its hero in full throttle. Roberts has already won kudos for her book on geometer Donald Coxeter, and this volume serves to cement her position as a top mathematical biographer." —Huffington Post
"Roberts is ingenious . . . in bringing this unpredictable, impossibly brilliant mathematician to life in this vivid and intimate portrayal." —The New York Times Numberplay blog
"Wonderfully written, fascinating and hilarious, the book is a delight from beginning to end. Roberts has produced a playful and captivating portrait of the most playful mathematician alive." —Alex Bellos, author of HERE'S LOOKING AT EUCLID and THE GRAPES OF MATH
"John Conway is, by any standards, a very remarkable man, and he well deserves a remarkable biography, which this book undoubtedly is. Siobhan Roberts . . . expertly conjures up a genuine picture of the man and his amazing world." —Roger Penrose, author of THE ROAD TO REALITY and THE EMPEROR'S NEW MIND
"In this engrossing biography, readers see this genius repeatedly turn perplexities into breakthroughs . . . [Conway’s] personality that emerges from this freewheeling narrative responds to even deep confusion with an irresistible playfulness." —starred review,Booklist
"[An] entertaining portrait of a charismatic genius." —Kirkus Reviews
"It’s a riveting read, and you don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy it." —Baron Martin Rees of Ludlow, UK Astronomer Royal and author of JUST SIX NUMBERS
"One of the oddest, most enticing biographies . . . . The biography of someone who is just a figment of the imagination--but what an imagination--that of John Horton Conway himself." —Literary Review of Canada
"Unflinchingly honest yet entertaining and lively." —Physics World