A new train station opened last month in the British university town of Cambridge. In promotional materials for the new station, both the building’s architect and its operating company said the striking aluminum façade was inspired by the Game of Life, the famous mathematical model created by former Cambridge University professor John Conway in 1970.
Quartz reached Conway at Princeton University, where he has been a professor (now emeritus) since 1987. He said he hadn’t been asked about the station design, and hadn’t seen the new building. After reviewing photographs of the building, he had one response for those claiming it is based on his mathematical model: “They’re wrong.”