The game of life was invented by john conway, who is currently a professor of mathematics at princeton. it’s not a game in the traditional sense, but rather a grid of cells that changes over time according to a few simple rules.

at a given point in time, each cell in the grid is either "alive" (represented by a value of 1) or "dead" (represented by a value of 0). the neighbors of a cell are the cells that immediately surround it in the grid.

over time, the grid is repeatedly updated according to the following five rules:

all cells on the outer boundary of the grid remain fixed at 0.

an inner cell that has fewer than 2 alive neighbors dies (because of loneliness).

an inner cell that has more than 3 alive neighbors dies (because of overcrowding).

an inner cell that is dead and has exactly 3 alive neighbors comes to life.

all other cells maintain their state.