Early life Guy was born 30 September 1916 in
Nuneaton,
Warwickshire, England, to Adeline Augusta Tanner and William Alexander Charles Guy. Both of his parents were teachers, rising to the rank of headmistress and headmaster, respectively. He attended
Warwick School for Boys, the third oldest school in Britain, but was not enthusiastic about most of the curriculum. He was good at sports and excelled in mathematics. At the age of 17 he read
Dickson's
History of the Theory of Numbers. He said it was better than "the whole works of Shakespeare", solidifying his lifelong interest in mathematics. In 1935 Guy entered
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, as a result of winning several scholarships. To win the most important of these he had to travel to Cambridge and write exams for two days. His interest in games began while at Cambridge where he became an avid composer of
chess problems. In 1938, he was graduated with a
second-class honours degree; he would later state that his failure to get a first may have been related to his obsession with chess. Although his parents strongly advised against it, Guy decided to become a teacher and got a teaching diploma at the
University of Birmingham. He met his future wife, Nancy Louise Thirian, through her brother Michael, who was a fellow scholarship winner at Gonville and Caius. He and Louise shared loves of mountain climbing and dancing. They married in December 1940.
War years In November 1942, Guy received an emergency commission in the Meteorological Branch of the
Royal Air Force, with the rank of
flight lieutenant. He was posted to
Reykjavík, and later to
Bermuda, as a
meteorologist. He tried to get permission for Louise to join him but was refused. While in Iceland, he did some glacier travel, skiing, and mountain climbing, marking the beginning of another long love affair, this one with snow and ice. When Guy returned to England after the war, he went back to teaching, this time at
Stockport Grammar School, but stayed only two years. In 1947 the family moved to London, where he got a job teaching mathematics at
Goldsmiths' College.
Later life and death In 1951 he moved to Singapore, where he taught at the
University of Malaya until 1962. He then spent a few years at the
Indian Institute of Technology in
Delhi, India. While they were in India, he and Louise went mountaineering in the foothills of the
Himalayas. Guy moved to Canada in 1965, settling down at the
University of Calgary in Alberta, where he obtained a professorship. Although he officially retired in 1982, he still went to the office five days a week to work, even as he passed the age of 100. Along with George Thomas and
John Selfridge, Guy taught at
Canada/USA Mathcamp during its early years. In 1991 the University of Calgary awarded him an
honorary doctorate. Guy said that they gave him the degree out of embarrassment, although the university stated that "his extensive research efforts and prolific writings in the field of number theory and combinatorics have added much to the underpinnings of game theory and its extensive application to many forms of human activity." Guy and his wife Louise (who died in 2010) remained very committed to mountain hiking and environmentalism even in their later years. In 2014, he donated $100,000 to the
Alpine Club of Canada for the training of amateur leaders. In turn, the Alpine Club has honoured them by building the
Louise and Richard Guy Hut near the base of
Mont des Poilus. They had three children, among them computer scientist and mathematician
Michael J. T. Guy. Guy died on 9 March 2020 at the age of 103. ==Mathematics==