Bill Gosper

Bill Gosper
Born	1943
Residence	Unknown
Nationality	American
Institutions	Unknown
Alma mater	MIT

Ralph William Gosper, Jr. (born 1943, commonly known as Bill Gosper), is an American mathematician and programmer who found some of the first complex and interesting constructed patterns in the Game of Life.

He found the first known (and still most well-known) shuttle oscillators: queen bee shuttle, twin bees shuttle and centinal. Based on the queen bee shuttle, he created by far his most well-known pattern, the Gosper glider gun. The Gosper glider gun was not only the first gun to be discovered, but also the first known finite pattern to exhibit infinite growth of any kind. He also found some of the other earliest known guns, including new gun 1 and new gun 2, and the first first known puffers, puffer 1 and puffer 2.

Gosper also created the extremely important HashLife algorithm for simulating Life-like cellular automata.

Patterns found by Bill Gosper

1

• 106P135
• 186P24

A

• Achim's other p16

B

• Bi-gun
• Breeder 1

C

• Centinal

E

• Eater 1
• Ecologist

G

• Glider train
• Gosper glider gun
• Gotts dots

N

• New gun 1
• New gun 2

P

• P110 traffic jam
• P200 traffic jam
• P28 pre-pulsar shuttle
• P29 pentadecathlon hassler
• P46-based PRNG
• P48 toad hassler
• P58 toadsucker
• Pentoad
• Period-60 glider gun
• Puffer 1
• Puffer 2

Q

• Queen bee shuttle

S

• Ship in a bottle

T

• Total aperiodic
• Twin bees shuttle
• Twin bees shuttle spark
• Two eaters

References

• "Life Credits". Mark D. Niemiec. Retrieved on May 22, 2009.

External links

• Bill Gosper at Wikipedia
• Homepage of Bill Gosper