Edward William Formanek (born May 6, 1942)[1][2] is an American mathematician and chess player. He is a professor emeritus of mathematics at Pennsylvania State University,[3][4] and a FIDE International Master in chess.[1]
| Edward W. Formanek | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 6, 1942 |
| Title | International Master (1977) |
| Peak rating | 2430 (January 1976) |
Mathematical career
editFormanek earned his Ph.D. in 1970 from Rice University, under the supervision of Stephen M. Gersten.[5][6] He joined the Penn State faculty in 1978, and retired in 2009.[4]
In 1972, Formanek was one of two mathematicians to independently discover the central polynomials, which have applications to polynomial identity rings.[7] With Vesselin Drensky, Formanek is the author of the book Polynomial Identity Rings (Birkhäuser, 2004).[8]
In 2012, he became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.[3][9]
Chess career
editFormanek became a FIDE International Master in 1977.[2]
He has won the Pennsylvania State Championship five times, in 1984, 1993, 1997, 1998, and 2004.[10] However, his most famous result from this series may be in 1988, when he led the tournament going into the last round but was defeated by computer program HiTech,[11] becoming the first IM to lose a game to a computer.[12] Later the same year HiTech would also defeat grandmaster Arnold Denker.[12]
References
edit- ^ a b Player profile, World Chess Federation, retrieved 2015-02-02.
- ^ a b "Happy Birthday, Ed!", British Chess Magazine, May 6, 2012.
- ^ a b The American Mathematical Society Elects New Fellows from Penn State, Pennsylvania State University, November 5, 2012.
- ^ a b Faculty and Staff News of Record: Partings Oct. 15, 2009, Pennsylvania State University, October 7, 2009.
- ^ Edward W. Formanek at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Formanek, Edward William (1970), Matrix Techniques in Polycyclic Groups, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Rice University, hdl:1911/14599.
- ^ Passman, Donald S. (2011), The Algebraic Structure of Group Rings, Dover Books on Mathematics, Courier Dover, p. 203, ISBN 9780486482064.
- ^ Rowen, Louis (2006), "Polynomial identity rings, by Vesselin Drensky and Edward Formanek", Book Reviews, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 43: 259–267, doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-06-01082-2.
- ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2015-02-02.
- ^ Pennsylvania State Championships Results, retrieved 2015-02-02.
- ^ Berliner, Hans J. (1988), "Hitech Becomes First Computer Senior Master", AI Magazine, 9 (3): 85–87, doi:10.1609/aimag.v9i3.946.
- ^ a b Wall, Bill (August 7, 2007), Computers and Chess - A History, chess.com.