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| (1) Posted by Peter Wong [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 04:06] |
Problemists distinguished in other fields?
Wondering who should be included in such a list – people who have published chess problems but are also eminent figures in a field unrelated to chess. I think a good test of "eminence" is that the person has their own Wikipedia article which focuses on their non-chess activities. Nabokov is probably the most obvious example. Sam Loyd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Loyd) is a borderline case, perhaps more famous for his chess problems than his other puzzles.
Vladimir Nabokov – novelist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov
Raymond Smullyan – mathematician
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Smullyan
Jeremy Morse – banker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Morse
Michael Lipton – economist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lipton
Robin Matthews – economist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Matthews_(economist)
Noam Elkies – mathematician
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Elkies
William K. Wimsatt – literary theorist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Wimsatt
Are there more examples?
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| (2) Posted by James Malcom [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 04:52] |
You missed a blatant case.
Tim Krabbe, journalist and novelist, or, as I term him, a "Dutch Wordsmith".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Krabb%C3%A9
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| (3) Posted by Peter Wong [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 05:40] |
Oh, yes, Tim Krabbe should be here, thanks! I actually wrote about him on my site many years ago and mentioned a movie based on his novel.
Another one I forgot to mention: Frederick Esling who was an Australian railway engineer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Esling
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| (4) Posted by Andrew Buchanan [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 09:08] |
For me, Sam Loyd is definitely in: his impact on chess problems is huge, but I think his general impact on puzzles is sufficient: Loyd is widely acknowledged as one of America's great puzzle writers and popularizers, often mentioned as the greatest. Martin Gardner featured Loyd in his August 1957 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American and called him "America's greatest puzzler". In 1898, The Strand dubbed him "the prince of puzzlers".
some other definites for inclusion, to my mind:
Milan Radoje Vukčević
Lord Dunsany
Jonathan Mestel
Richard P. Stanley
a few others who have minor problem output are:
Aleister Crowley
Henry Ernest Dudeney
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| (5) Posted by Joost de Heer [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 09:26] |
Dmitry Ulyanov (brother of Lenin) has 1 composition in yacpdb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Ilyich_Ulyanov
https://yacpdb.org/#42262
Siegfried Hornecker wrote an article on chessbase about SF author and studies composer Alexander Kazantsev a few weeks ago.
https://en.chessbase.com/post/study-of-the-month-alexander-petrovich-kazantsev-a-life-between-science-fiction-and-science-fiction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Kazantsev
(And nitpick: it's Krabbé, not Krabbe)
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| (6) Posted by Rosie Fay [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 09:41] |
Alfred de Musset, described in Wikipedia as "a French dramatist, poet, and novelist".
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| (7) Posted by Sarah Hornecker [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 09:54] |
Has anyone heard of this botanist who also created a small foundation in Connecticut? He collected threemovers. I think he also composed a few problems. Oh yea, and he published the "Christmas Series":
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Campbell_White
(No article in EN-Wikipedia yet? Shame on you!)
EDITs: Alexander George and possibly Jan Sprenger also would qualify. While I know only one endgame study of Alexander George, he is a famous philosopher from Amherst College. In our latest conversation, we talked about another famous man from Amherst College who didn't compose in chess but in music. But you might have heard of him as well, his name is Jim Steinman. Jan Sprenger also becomes well known as a philosopher, although to my knowledge only in chess circles so far. He composes endgame studies regularly nowadays.
And there was this endgame study composer who wanted to become an opera singer. He was rejected by the Bolshoi theater in 1950 (so instead he became a professional chess player), but eventually in 1997 recorded a CD where he sang music. Maybe that doesn't make him well-known enough outside of chess, but the story is fascinating. Oh, yes. That rejection from the theater also was why he became World Chess Champion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Smyslov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAvrT52VXOI - Operatic Arias
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbDkuI3p3JI - Smyslov sings "Stenka Rasin"
From Germany, we have Heinrich Cordes, the railway engineer, who created a famous chess study. He has a street in Berlin named after him. Although... well... "street" is the official term (it is a mini-street near some railway tracks), and they even got his life data wrong there on a memorial plaque...
DE-Wikipedia says he became a writer and poet after his left arm was amputated: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Cordes_(Schachkomponist%29
From the small "expedition" by Klaus Rubin, Rainer Staudte and me in 2010 to find the Cordesstraße, there is this photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SchildCordesstr.jpg
Also, there is a world-famous mathematician who created a few endgame studies. Although he was only an amateur mathematician, he was one of the most brilliant of the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_K._Guy
(note: According to information by Andrew Buchanan, Guy was a professional mathematician and called himself an amateur as a joke.)
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| (8) Posted by Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 10:25] |
Fascinating. Thanks for starting this topic. I guess noone comes close to Nabokov (in fame anyway).
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| (9) Posted by Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 10:36] |
I guess Marcel Duchamp should be counted as well. He also wrote a book on opposition with Halberstadt.
https://www.yacpdb.org/#328912
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| (10) Posted by shankar ram [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 11:07] |
Valentin Rudenko, Satellite builder.
http://matplus.net/start.php?px=1459852823&app=forum&act=posts&fid=gen&tid=1810&pid=14475#n14475
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| (11) Posted by Frank Richter [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 11:46] |
Ottó Titusz Bláthy – engineer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ott%C3%B3_Bl%C3%A1thy
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| (12) Posted by Vitaly Medintsev [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 12:21] |
Lev Grolman - engineer, inventor
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Грольман,_Лев_Владимирович
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| (13) Posted by Kevin Begley [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 12:56] |
It almost goes without saying, but it should be said (apologies if it has already been said, and I missed it), there are a large number of distinguished chess players (OTB, Correspondence) who have composed chess problems.
I would also include a number of distinguished chess problem solvers, but that's only if you're looking for composers (clearly, it would be redundant to state Solvers are fellow problemists).
Beyond that, I would add two names (apologies again if somebody already dropped these names).
1)
Lionel Sharples Penrose was a psychiatrist, medical geneticist, and mathematician who carried out pioneering work on the genetics of mental retardation.
He has two laws:
Penrose's Law: the population size of prisons and psychiatric hospitals are inversely related (an oversimplification perhaps, but certainly an observation which merits consideration).
The Penrose square root law (concerning the distribution of the voting power in a voting body consisting of N members) states that the a priori voting power of any voter, measured by the Penrose–Banzhaf index scales like 1/√(N).
2)
Philip Stuart Milner-Barry was a codebreaker who worked with Alan Turing to crack the Enigma cipher.
That's just one instance, likely of many, we might easily overlook, since many problemists are better known for their contributions to the chess game.
Curiously, I have yet to find an infamous character who was a problem composer (though a few chess players would fit this category).
I seem to recall encountering numerous arch-criminals who were chess problem enthusiasts in fiction; in real life, however, any such characters must have managed a clean getaway.
Even in fiction today, the criminal masterminds and super villains are leaving chess problem enthusiasts disappointed (audiences are lucky to get some lousy anagrams anymore).
The chess mysteries of Sherlock Holmes didn't exactly provide a blueprint for psychologically impaired criminals to taunt detectives with solving tools (hint: you can spell out any crime you like using the Alphabetiques Fairy Condition on a large board).
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| (14) Posted by Peter Wong [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 13:01] |
Wow, thanks for all these examples – I'm sure to check them all out. My original list consists of English-speakers only, so it's nice to see more international representatives.
While the large number of mathematicians is not that surprising, the abundance of literary figures is remarkable.
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| (15) Posted by Kevin Begley [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 13:53] |
>"While the large number of mathematicians is not that surprising, the abundance of literary figures is remarkable."
Speaking of literary figures, how did nobody mention Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carrol)?
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| (16) Posted by Kevin Begley [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 14:22] |
Andrzej Piotr Ruszczyński
https://wikimili.com/en/Andrzej_Piotr_Ruszczy%C5%84ski
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| (17) Posted by Kevin Begley [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 14:32] |
Eric Ernest Zepler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Zepler
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| (18) Posted by Andrew Buchanan [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 16:16] |
The German entry for TRDawson https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Rayner_Dawson gives a log of information about the day job of Thomas Rayner Dawson, as the leading information architect in the British rubber industry. It speaks of the Dawson system for information classification
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| (19) Posted by Andrew Buchanan [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 16:16] |
(Duplicate)
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| (20) Posted by Vlaicu Crisan [Wednesday, Sep 7, 2022 19:42] |
Emilian Dobrescu - member of Romanian Academy for economy
https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilian_Dobrescu
Virgil Nestorescu - doctor in philology, specialist in Romanian dialects from the Southern Danube
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Nestorescu
Paul Farago - doctor in engineering
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1l_Farag%C3%B3
Wolfgang Pauly - VP of an insurance company; also discovered the comet Coddington-Pauly
https://koaha.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauly
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