Nobel Prize Winners Who Play(ed) Chess

By Bill Wall

 

Jane Addams (1860-1935).  She won the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize.  She grew up playing chess.

 

Zhores Ivanovich Alferov (1930- ).  He won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in electronics.  He invented the heterotransister.  He is a good friend of Boris Spassky.

 

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989).  He won the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet.  In 1948, he wrote his most famous play, Waiting for Godot.  In 1957, he wrote a one-act play called Endgame, which uses chess as a controlling metaphor.  He may have played chess with Marcel Duchamp, but Teen Duchamp, the artist’s widow, denied that Marcel ever played chess with Beckett.  In Murphy, written in 1938, Beckett’s protagonist is a male nurse in a mental hospital where he plays chess with one of the patients, Mr. Endon. 

 

Menachem Begin (1913-1992).  He won the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize together with Anwar Sadat.  He was the sixth prime minister of the State of Israel.  In 1944 he was playing a game of chess with his wife when Russian soldiers burst into his home to arrest him.  As they dragged him away, he shouted to Mrs Begin, “I resign.”    In 1979, Presidential advisor Zbigniew Brezezinski invited Begin to play chess while they were at Camp David.  As they sat down, Begin said, “I haven’t played chess in 40 years.  Not since the day the Nazis kicked my door and dragged me and my family off to Auschwitz.”  After the game started, Mrs. Begin came in and said, “Oh, I see you are playing chess.  It’s Menachem’s favorite.  He never stops playing!”

 

Emil von Behring (1854-1917).  He won the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901.  Behring was the discoverer of diphtheria antitoxin and developed a serum therapy against diphtheria and tetanus.  He played chess to help with his depression.  During the last months of his life, when he was bedridden with a broken thighbone, he had surgeon play chess with him to keep his mind off the severe pains he was having.

 

William Henry Bragg (1862-1942).  He won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his son, William Lawrence Bragg..  They were awarded for their work in X-rays and crystal structure.  W.H. Bragg was the secretary of his school’s chess club at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

 

William Lawrence Bragg (1890-1971).  He won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in X-rays and crystal structure.  He is the son of William Henry Bragg, who also won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics.

 

Willy Brandt (1913-1992).  He won the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize.  He was Chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974.

 

Percy Williams Bridgman (1882-1961).  He won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures.  He played on the Harvard varsity chess team and represented his school in many college events and the beginning of the 20th century.

 

Santiago Cajal (1852-1934).  He won the 1906 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work in neuroscience.  His hobbies were chess, drawing, and photography.  Early in his career he spent many hours in the Geneva cafes playing chess, including blindfold simultaneous games.  He taught his children to play chess/

 

Elias Canetti (1905-1994).  He won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature.  In 1935, he wrote Auto da Fe (Die Blendung or The Tower of Babel). One of the characters is a chess player named Fischerle (Fischer), who longs to be world chess champion.  He later becomes a famous and wealthy chess champion.

 

Jimmy Carter (1924- ).  He won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.  He was 39th President of the United States.  He wanted to become a chess expert after he left the White House. He bought numerous chess books and a computer chess program. He finally gave up on chess around 1997, saying: "I found that I don't have any particular talent for chess. I hate to admit it, but that's a fact."  In 2005, Jimmy Carter was invited to play chess against former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, but the meeting never materialized.  At his home in Plains, Georgia, Carter, an avid woodworker, designed and built his chess table and chess pieces.

 

Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937).  He won the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize. 

 

Winston Churchill (1874-1965).  He won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, and from 1951 to 1955.He was taught chess by his father, Lord Randolph Churchill (1849-1895), who was vice-president of the British Chess Association.

 

John Cockroft (1897-1967).  He won the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics for splitting the atomic nucleus. 

 

John Cornforth (1917- ).  He won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions.  He has played chess all his life.  In 1938, he set an Australian simultaneous blindfold exhibition record of 12 games, winning 8, drawing 2, and losing 2.  The record still stands.  He often played chess with Sir Robert Robinson, another Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry.

 

Paul Crutzen (1933- ).  He won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  In his younger days, he was a good chess player.

 

Gerard Debreu (1921-2004).  He won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Economics.

 

Max Delbrueck (1905-1981).  He shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Salvador Luria for their work in bacterial resistance to virus infection.  He liked to play blitz chess.

 

Paul Dirac (1902-1984).  He won the 1933 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory.  He was interested in chess problems and usually discussed chess with Heisenberg.  He served for many years as president of the chess club at St. John’s College.

 

Albert Einstein (1879-1955).  He won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.  He was good friends with Emanuel Lasker.Einstein was an amateur chess player who played with neighbors and friends.  He always had a chessboard set up at his home.  He was probably most active in chess in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  There is an alleged game of his playing Robert Oppenheimer.

 

T.S. Eliot  (1888-1965).  He won the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He authored The Waste Land which has a chapter called “A Game of Chess.”

 

William Faulkner (1897-1962).  He won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He wrote a story called “Knight’s Gambit.”

 

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954).  He won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity.  He was a poor chess player, but he did play chess, and was a stronger tennis player.

 

Richard Feynman (1918-1988).  He won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics.  He also discovered superfluidity and developed the first quark theory.  He used rules of chess to illustrate the laws of physics.  He was a member of his high school chess club.

 

Milton Friedman (1912-2006).  He won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics.  He played chess on the chess team during high school in Rahway, New Jersey.

 

Ivar Giaever (1929- ).  In 1973 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson for their discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in solids.  He learned chess from his father at the age of four.  He uses chess to illustrate the science of Nature.

 

Andre Gide (1869-1951).  He won the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He played chess with his friends and wrote about chess in his journals.

 

William Golding (1911-1993).  He won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.  In 1954, he wrote Lord of the Flies.  One of the quotes from that novel is “The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.”  Golding listed chess as one of his hobbies.

 

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931- ).  He won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.  He was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 to 1991.  He has been involved with the Chess for Peace initiative with former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov.

 

Al Gore (1948- ).  He won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.  He was the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001.

 

Paul Greengard (1925- ).  In 2000, Greengard, Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system.  In high school he spent a lot of time studying and playing chess.

 

John Harsanyi (1920-2001).  He won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics.  Chess was once his passion but gave it up later in life.  He said, “At one point I lost most of my chess games.  Then I realized many of my competitors were memorizing the best moves and I was unwilling to do this.”

 

James Heckman (1944- ).  He won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Economics.  He is an economics professor at the University of Chicago.  His son, Jonathan, also plays chess.

 

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976).  He won the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics.  In his spare time he played chess.  He often discussed chess problems with Paul Dirac.  Wolfgang Pauli once told Heisenberg to give up chess and save whatever intellectual effort he could muster for physics.

 

Dudley Herschbach (1932- ).  He won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.

 

Gerhard Herzberg (1904-1999).  He won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on molecular spectroscopy.  At home in the evenings, Herzog would relax by playing chess with friends.

 

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962).  He won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature.  His best known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game.  One of the chapters in Steppenwolf is “The Chess Player.”

 

H. Robert Horvitz (1947- ).  He won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for apoptosis research.  He played chess as a child.

 

Peter Kapitza (1894-1984).  He won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in superfluidity.  When he was living in Paris at one time, he used to make a living by playing chess in the small cafes for some stake.  He pretended he was just a beginner and, in the end, he would usually win.  He was frequently Stalin’s chess partner.

 

Bernard Katz (1911-2003).  He shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Julius Axelrod and Ulf von Euler for their work on neurophysiology of the synapse.  He was born in Leipzig.  He chose to learn Latin and Greek rather than mathematics because, he said, it game him more time to play chess in the cafes of Leipzig.  He developed a lifelong passion for chess.

 

Edward Kendall (1886-1972).  He won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  He discovered the hormone cortisone.  He was a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and an ardent chess player.

 

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).  He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He is the author of The Jungle Book. 

 

Henry Kissinger (1923- ).  He shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho.  He served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Richard Nixon administration.  Kissinger called Bobby Fischer several times during the 1972 World Chess Championship match to encourage Fischer to play on and defeat Spassky.  After calling Fischer, he said, “this is the worst player in the world calling the best player in the world.”

 

Robert Koch (1843-1910).  He won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his tuberculosis findings.  He is considered one of the founders of microbiology.  He was an enthusiastic chess player and followed the chess world through chess periodicals and books.  He was chess champion of his high school in Germany.

 

Tjalling Koopmans (1910-1985).  In 1975 he was the joint winner, with Leonid Kantorovich, of the Nobel Prize in Economics.   He was a chess enthusiast.

 

Hans Krebs (1900-1981).  He won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his identification of metabolic cycles.  He studied chess as a child, but did not become a strong player.

 

Richard Kuhn (1900-1967).  He won the 1938 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on carotenoids and vitamins.

 

Willis Eugene Lamb (1913-2008).  He won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum.  He played in a few chess tournaments in California.

 

Paul Lauterbur (1929-2007).  He shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Peter Mansfield.  Lauterbur made the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) possible.  He played chess in high school.

 

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951).  He won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He wrote Main Street,Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Cass Timberlane.  During the last period of his life, he would hire secretaries to play chess with him and keep him company.  He would pay them a month to learn the game, then paid them as his secretary to play chess.  He secretaries included San Francisoc writer Barnaby Conrad and John Hershey.  Other friends that visited Sinclair Lewis to play chess included Bennett Cerf, Carl Van Doren, and John Gunther.

 

Nelson Madela (1918- ).  He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. de Klerk.  He played chess while in prison and it became his favorite game.

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927- ).  He won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature and is the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude.  He mentioned chess in several of his works, such as Love in the Time of Cholera where the doctor’s chess partner commits suicide.

 

Albert Michelson (1852-1931).  He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the measurement of the speed of light.  He listed chess, bridge, billiards, and tennis as his interests ouside of physics.  He participated in several chess tournaments in California.

 

Robert Mundell (1932- ).  He won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economics.  He laid the groundwork for the introduction of the euro.  He sponsored a major chess tournament in China (Pearl Spring in Nanjing), saying that the best way for Chinese cities to show openness to the outside world is to host world-class chess tournaments.  For relaxation, he plays chess.

 

Ferid Murad (1936- ).  He was a co-winner, with Robert Furchgott and Louis Ignarro, of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on the cardiovascular system.  He played chess in his younger days.

 

Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930).  He won the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner.  He played chess during his arctic expeditions.

 

John Forbes Nash (1928- ).  He won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in game theory, where he called chess a “zero-sum” game.  He played chess in his younger years.

 

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).  He won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He once said, “To me [chess] is poetry, the poetry of fight, intelligence and will.”

 

Douglass North (1920- ).  He was the co-recipient, with Robert Fogel, of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics.  At his first job at the University of Washington, he played chess every day for three years with Don Gordon, who taught him economic theory.

 

Heike Onnes (1853-1926).  He won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the properties of matter at low temperatures and to the production of liquid helium.

 

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960).  He won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He wrote Dr. Zhivago.  His parents and other relatives were also chess players.

 

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936).  He won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research pertaining to the digestive system. 

 

Max Planck (1858-1947).  He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of energy quanta.  Max Planck played chess with Emanuel Lasker.

 

Edward Prescott (1940- ).  He won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics.  He learned chess from his father and taught his son to play chess.

 

Isidor Rabi (1898-1988).  He won the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance.

 

Charles Robert Richet (1850-1935).  He won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for understanding allergic reactions.

 

Richard J. Roberts (1943- ).  He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Sharp for the discovery of introns in DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing.  He played chess in high school.

 

Robert Robinson (1886-1975).  He won the 1947 Nobel Prize on Chemistry.  He was president of the British Chess Federation (1950-1953) and played correspondence chess while in his 80s.  He co-wrote a book called The Art and Science of Chess.  He and fellow Nobel Prize winner Sir John Cornforth used to play chess together.

 

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919).  He won the 1906 Peace Prize.  He was the 26th U.S. President from 1901 to 1909.He once played a game against the automaton Ajeeb, and lost.  He played chess during his hunting trips.  In 1906, he invited the chess players that played at Cambridge Springs to the White House.  He kept a chess set at the White House.

 

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970).  He won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He played chess with his family and said he lost friends to one of three addictions: alcohol or religion or chess.

 

Anwar Sadat (1918-1981).  He won the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.  He was the third President of Egypt, serving from 1970 until his assassination in 1981.

 

Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989).  He won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize.  He was an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist.  He relaxed with chess, which he learned from his parents.

 

Abdus Salam (1926-1996).  He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for their work in Electro-Weak Theory.  He discovered chess in college and spent many hours playing chess before being reprimanded by his father for wasting valuable study time.

 

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).  He won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He was probably a weak chess player.  Sartre used chess as an analogy in his paper The Search for Method.

 

Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961).  He won the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to quantum mechanics.  He once wrote “I do like chess but it has turned out to be not the appropriate relaxation from the work I am doing.”

 

Julian Schwinger (1918-1994).  He won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics (QED).    He often played chess with mathematician Morton Hamermesh while n college.

 

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).  He won the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature.  Although he played chess, he wrote that “Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.”

 

William Shockley (1910-1989).  He shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor.

 

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916).   He won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He wrote about chess in several of his works, such as The Knights of the Cross and With Fire and Sword.

 

Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001).  He won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics.  He was an American psychologist and made a study of chess players.  In 1957, he predicted a digital computer would beat the world chess champion by 1967.  He developed a chess program in the 1950s and co-invented the alpha-beta algorithm in chess.

 

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991).  He won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He had a chess prodigy character in his book Shadows of the Hudson.

 

Frederick Soddy (1877-1956).  He won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research in radioactive decay and his formulation of the theory of isotopes.  He was Captain of the Oxford University Chess Club in 1900 and participated in cable matches between Oxford and American universities.

 

John Steinbeck (1902-1968).  He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He wrote The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men.

 

John William Strutt (1842-1919), 3rd Baron Rayleigh (Lord Rayleigh).  He won the 1904 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering the element argon.  He was elected president of the Essex County Chess Association in 1898.

 

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986).  He won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering vitamin C.  He was president of the Szeged chess circle in Hungary.

 

Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940).  He won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on his treatment of mental diseases.  He was addicted to chess in his early years while living in Vienna.

 

Alfred Werner (1866-1919).  He won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for proposing the octahedral configuration of transition metal complexes.  His recreations were billiards, chess, and a Swiss card game.

 

George Hoyt Whipple (1878-1976).  He shared the 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George Minot and William Murphy for their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anemia. 

 

Carl Wieman (1951- ).  He won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Bose-Einstein condensate.  He was a strong chess player in his younger years.

 

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924).  He won the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize.  He was the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921.  One of his chess sets is displayed at the Smithsonian.

 

William Yeats (1865-1939).  He won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He was an Irish poet.

 

 

Milan Vukcevich (1937-2003), an International Master  and Grandmaster in Chess Problem Composition, was considered for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  He was Chief Scientist at General Electric and professor of metallurgy.