Chess-playing Fellows of Royal Society

[Gordon Cadden]

... If the weather is too cold or too rainy, I take refuge in the Regency Café. I like to watch the games of chess. The best chess players in the world are in Paris, and the best players in Paris are in the Regency Café. Here, in Rey's establishment, they battle it out--Legal the Profound, Philidor the Subtle, Mayot the Solid. One sees the most surprising moves and hears the stupidest remarks. For one can be an intelligent man and a great chess player, like Legal, but one can also be a great chess player and a fool, like Foubert and Mayot...

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700101h.html

Believe that is a quote from Deschapelles

[Mike Truran]

Diderot.

[John McKenna]

Thanks to Gordon C for the prompt and to Mike T for that timely reminder.

Alexandre Deschapelles (1780-1847) could have quoted Dennis Diderot (1713-1784) - a bit like the modern habit of retweeting right, left and centre.

Read more about the effect Diderot had -

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diderot_effect

Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth. The poor man may take his ease without thinking of appearances, but the rich man is always under a strain

I suspect the same applies to chess - the more grading/rating points you have to lose the more the strain of keeping up appearances

NB: Diderot was passed over for membership of the Académie française.

[John Upham]

Here is perhaps a less well-known chess playing FRS :

Charles Tomlinson

https://chessbookchats.blogspot.com/201 ... areer.html

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_T ... scientist)

The first article has FRS whereas the second has "member".

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Since the 'academics known to play chess' seem to go here, I am putting another one here,

Paul Vinogradoff

Sir Paul Gavrilovitch Vinogradoff (1854-1925) was a Russian and British historian and medievalist.

He was born in the Russian Empire, studied in Germany, settled in England.

I came across a mention of him in an article from 1960 by F. F. Russell (Rhodes Scholar) who stated that there was an 'author photo' in one of Vinogradoff's books showing him at a chessboard. He played for Oxford City Chess Club and for the County of Oxfordshire and regularly competed in the city championships.

He died in 1925, so no-one now alive will have a living memory of him but I wonder if anyone heard secondhand about him from others?

Chessgames claim to have four games by him under the name 'Paul Vinogradov':

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=81095

Not sure if this is the same person. A win in a correspondence game against Alekhine (apparently this is actually Alekhine's elder brother)?

And I see that Tim Harding has written a bit about Vinogradoff / Vinogradov in his thesis:

"He beat the future world champion Alexander Alekhine 2 -0 in the 7th Shakmatnoe Obozrenie postal tournament 1903-4 (Alekhine was
only about eleven years old then) but lost at least one of their games in the 17 th S.O. tournament that began in November 1909."

Have people used this as a Morphy Number route?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

And Andrei Markov (of Markov chain fame) was a chess player.

According to the author on page 479 of Probability and Statistics by Example: Volume 2, Markov Chains: A Primer in Random Processes and Their Applications, Markov played in one of the cable matches that took place in the First World War (this is the Moscow versus Oxford match in 1916):

Andrey A Markov vs Paul Vinogradov 1-0

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 dxe4 5.Nxe4 Nbd7 6.Nf3 Be7 7.Nxf6+ Nxf6 8.c3 O-O 9.Bd3 b6 10.Qc2 h6 11.h4 Bb7 12.O-O-O Nd5 13.Bh7+ Kh8 14.Be4 f5 15.Bxe7 Qxe7 16.Ne5 Kh7 17.Bf3 c5 18.dxc5 bxc5 19.Rhe1 Rad8 20.g3 Nf6 21.Bxb7 Qxb7 22.f3 Qc7 23.Rxd8 Rxd8 24.g4 Rd5 25.f4 Ne4 26.gxf5 Rxe5 27.fxe5 exf5 28.Rxe4 fxe4 29.Qxe4+ Kg8 30.Qd5+ Kf8 31.h5 Ke7 32.Kd2 Qb6 33.b3 a5 34.Qd6+ Qxd6+ 35.exd6+ Kxd6 36.Kd3 g5 37.hxg6

Not quite sure why that is described as a "beautiful example" of a game, but it seemed suitable to put here (Vinogradov is the Vinogradoff mentioned in the previous post).

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Copying this across from another thread where I noted that:

It is interesting to see where some of those who played at the 1981 Lloyds Bank Masters are now. One example I alighted on was Ed. W. Formanek, at the time a US International Master, who is more famous for being the first IM to lose to a computer (in 1988), but at the time of the 1981 tournament in London already held a doctorate in mathematics (he worked on polynomial identity rings) and should be added to the list of academics who hold international chess titles (worked at Penn State from 1978 to 2009, becoming professor of mathematics there):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_W._Formanek

Full list and crosstable here:

https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pgn/19 ... iewer.html

(I know Formanek is not FRS, but I have been unable to find that earlier thread where academics who play chess was discussed.)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

ORIGINAL POST MOVED TO NEW THREAD: see Intersection between academia and international chess titles.

[SeanCoffey]

Let's not forget Anthony Leggett (https://royalsociety.org/people/anthony-leggett-11804/), FRS 1980, whose Brittanica page doesn't even mention this distinction (see https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anthony-J-Leggett); it was crowded out by the Nobel Prize for Physics (2003) and knighthood (2004).

He played for England in the Glorney Cup in 1955 (https://www.irlchess.com/2021/09/08/glorney-cup-1955/), and possibly in 1954 as well (records show only a "D. Leggott", who doesn't seem to appear anywhere else). He mentions this experience in his Nobel Prize biography (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physi ... graphical/): “I had a brief moment of glory when some years later, I was picked for the English team to compete against Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in the (under-16) [sic] Glorney Cup”.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

That is fascinating, Sean, thank you.

Leggett's biographical note mentions his unorthodox academic background (his first degree in the Classics at Oxford, the 'Greats' was followed by a second undergraduate degree in physics!). It also mentions his siblings: "two sisters, Clare and Judith, and two brothers, Terence and Paul". No sign of a "D. Leggott" (wonder if that is someone else entirely?). Any chance of anyone checking the original (handwritten?) records?

There is a "Derek Leggett (Phibsboro)" mentioned in the 1980 Irish Championships page:

http://www.irlchess.com/irlch1980_allfi ... h1980.html

But he appears to have been born in 1950, so "D. Leggott" may well be a typo as you say.

I have no idea how common the surnames Leggott and Leggett are (there is a Robert Leggett in the games collection from 2014).

Going back to the Nobel laureate Leggett, you say elsewhere on the IRL chess pages that A. J. Leggett:

"played in the British Boys’ championships of 1953-55"

I wonder if there is more available on that?

The relevant cross-tables/results are here (no cross-table for 1955):

https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/1 ... iewer.html
https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/1 ... iewer.html
https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/1 ... iewer.html

A. J. Leggett scored 5/9 (1953), 5.5/11 (1954) and 4.5/11 (1955).

Nothing about chess in Leggett's recent (2020) auto-biographcal piece here (which focuses on his academic career):

Leggett clearly did not carry on with competitive chess beyond his teen years, but I wonder if (for clarification of some of this, such as whether he played in one or two Glorney Cups) it is worth reaching out to Leggett, who is in his eighties now, but probably still contactable through his university email address:

https://physics.illinois.edu/people/dir ... e/aleggett

[John Clarke]

I have no idea how common the surnames Leggott and Leggett are (there is a Robert Leggett in the games collection from 2014).

There's a third variant spelling as well: I was at school with one, who most certainly wasn't a chess player. Here's the LiChess page of at least one who is.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I really need to pull together the various lists of academics who play chess, as a couple more have popped up in my browsing of results from the Student Team Championships.

Just the England ones for now, though presumably other countries' player lists will yield similar results.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Pereira_Gray
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Streater

Not FRS (as far as I know, though Gray has a distinguished grouping of medical equivalents, a knighthood and an impressive career) but putting these examples here for now.

[SeanCoffey]

That is fascinating, Sean, thank you.

Leggett's biographical note mentions his unorthodox academic background (his first degree in the Classics at Oxford, the 'Greats' was followed by a second undergraduate degree in physics!). It also mentions his siblings: "two sisters, Clare and Judith, and two brothers, Terence and Paul". No sign of a "D. Leggott" (wonder if that is someone else entirely?). Any chance of anyone checking the original (handwritten?) records?

There is a "Derek Leggett (Phibsboro)" mentioned in the 1980 Irish Championships page:

http://www.irlchess.com/irlch1980_allfi ... h1980.html

But he appears to have been born in 1950, so "D. Leggott" may well be a typo as you say.

I have no idea how common the surnames Leggott and Leggett are (there is a Robert Leggett in the games collection from 2014).

Going back to the Nobel laureate Leggett, you say elsewhere on the IRL chess pages that A. J. Leggett:

"played in the British Boys’ championships of 1953-55"

I wonder if there is more available on that?

The relevant cross-tables/results are here (no cross-table for 1955):

https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/1 ... iewer.html
https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/1 ... iewer.html
https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/1 ... iewer.html

A. J. Leggett scored 5/9 (1953), 5.5/11 (1954) and 4.5/11 (1955).

Nothing about chess in Leggett's recent (2020) auto-biographcal piece here (which focuses on his academic career):

Leggett clearly did not carry on with competitive chess beyond his teen years, but I wonder if (for clarification of some of this, such as whether he played in one or two Glorney Cups) it is worth reaching out to Leggett, who is in his eighties now, but probably still contactable through his university email address:

https://physics.illinois.edu/people/dir ... e/aleggett

Based on this suggestion, I sent an email to A. J. Leggett earlier this week, and I'm delighted to report that I received a very cordial response from him today, confirming that he did in fact play in both the 1954 and 1955 Glorney Cups. He recalled playing in the British Boys Championship in Aberystwyth and at least one earlier year (he vaguely recalled Hastings), and says "I didn't do particularly well in any of these events, but I certainly enjoyed them."