[xrange]

>Does he ever mention Conway in any of his texts?

For "A New Kind of Science", here is the index entry:

    Conway, John H. (England/USA, 1937- )
      and arithmetic recurrences, 1115
      and Game of Life, 877, 880, 949
      and iterated run-length encoding, 905
      and non-periodic tilings, 943
      in Preface, xiii
      and recursive sequences, 907
      and universality of Life, 1117

https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/index/names/a-e.php?Searc...