Genius player

On Wednesday, Graham realised a long-held ambition to meet John Conway, one of the most innovative mathematicians of the past few decades.

John Conway – drawn by Simon J. Fraser (1973)

Inventor of ‘The Game of Life’, surreal numbers and ideas that have found applications in theoretical physics, Conway is a unique figure. Now emeritus professor at Princeton University, he is currently visiting the UK, and has given a special lecture at Cambridge. Graham arranged for him to give an interview in London with The Guardian’s Ian Sample, available as a podcast.

 
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Neurotribesman

Graham this week realised a long-held ambition of meeting one of the few heroes of social media, Steve Silberman, once described by Graham as the ‘Roger Federer of Tweeting’. Long a prominent journalist, @stevesilberman is an authentic star of Twitter and has recently published NeuroTribes, his new perspective on autism, currently riding high in the New York Times best-sellers list. Recently, the book was long-listed for this year’s Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

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Steve Silberman (RHS) with Graham in London

70 years after Hiroshima

The Daily Telegraph published this article by Graham today, seventy years after the first use of a nuclear weapon.

The Atomic Bomb Explosion over Hiroshima. Photo: US Army

Is nature a work of art?

In today’s Guardian, Graham reviews A Beautiful Question, the latest book by the great American theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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