John Horton Conway was born on December 26, 1937, in Liverpool, England. The third child of parents Agnes and Cyril, Horton demonstrated remarkable math prowess early in his life; by age 4, he was reciting the powers of 2.
Aiming to become a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, Conway was a star math pupil at Liverpool's Holt High School for Boys. However, he was also a painfully shy introvert. After being accepted to the school of his dreams, he decided to overcome his social inhibitions and adopt an outgoing personality.