Maurice Wertheim
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Maurice Wertheim (born New York 1886, died Cos Cob, May 27, 1950) was an American investment banker, chess player, chess patron, environmentalist, and philanthropist. He financed much of the activity in American chess during the 1940s.
[edit] Biography
Maurice Wertheim graduated from Harvard University in 1906. He inherited nearly half a million dollars from his father, who had been successful with the United Cigar Manufacturers Company. He entered the investment banking field in 1915 in New York, and founded his own firm Maurice Wertheim and Company in 1927, developing a very successful business in mergers and acquisitions, and becoming wealthy in the process. During World War II, he served as a dollar-a-year man on the War Production Board in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Wertheim was a reasonably strong amateur chess player, who enjoyed the game, and put a lot of effort into his correspondence play. He was also interested in the theatre, in fishing, in nature conservancy, and in art. He donated 2,000 acres (8.1 km²) on eastern Long Island to the United States government in 1947; this became the Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge. He arranged for the donation of his world-class collection of French Impressionist paintings to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University upon his death. [1]
His main contributions to American chess are as a patron and an organizer. He financed the 1941 U.S. Championship match between Samuel Reshevsky and I.A. Horowitz, which was won by Reshevsky. He assisted the Manhattan Chess Club with a move to better quarters in 1941. He conceived the idea for the 1946 chess match between the United States and the Soviet Union in Moscow, convinced the U.S. State Department that it would make a difference in thawing the Cold War, and financed it, paying for the trans-Atlantic travel and hospitality upon arrival. [2]
After his death from a heart attack in 1950, a memorial Maurice Wertheim chess tournament was organized in 1951 in New York in his memory; it was won by Samuel Reshevsky.
Wertheim was the father of American historian Barbara W. Tuchman.
[edit] References
- The Bobby Fischer I Knew And Other Stories, by Arnold Denker and Larry Parr, Hypermodern Press 1995.
