Conway's Game of Life

Conway’s Game of Life

In 1970, British mathematician John Horton Conway invented a cellular automaton called The Game of Life. This simple game is governed by its initial cellular state and four simple rules:

• Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies, as if caused by underpopulation.
• Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation.
• Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.
• Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

The rules are applied to all the cells in the grid, starting with the initial grid populated with the starting live cells. After many iterations, the grid comes to an end-state which can be unexpected given the initial seed state.