4. Cellular Automata and Fractal Evolution

The Game of Life

John Conway's Game of Life is a two-dimensional Moore CA with this rule.
That is, a live cell stays alive if two or three of its neighbors are alive,
(fewer than two and the cell dies of lonliness,
more than three and the cell dies of overcrowding)
and a dead cell becomes alive if it has exactly three live neighbors
(mother, father, and ... midwife).
Conway invented Life in 1970; Martin Gardner introduced it to the general world in his Mathematical Games column of the October, 1970, and February, 1971, issues of Scientific American.
Poundstone's book is a good source of information about Life.

Return to Life.