Edward W. Formanek

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]

Mathematical career

Formanek 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

Formanek 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][13] Later the same year HiTech would also defeat grandmaster Arnold Denker.[13]

References

  1. 1 2 Player profile, World Chess Federation, retrieved 2015-02-02.
  2. 1 2 "Happy Birthday, Ed!", British Chess Magazine, May 6, 2012.
  3. 1 2 The American Mathematical Society Elects New Fellows from Penn State, Pennsylvania State University, November 5, 2012.
  4. 1 2 Faculty and Staff News of Record: Partings Oct. 15, 2009, Pennsylvania State University, October 7, 2009.
  5. ↑ Edward W. Formanek at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  6. ↑ Formanek, Edward William, Matrix Techniques in Polycyclic Groups, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Rice University.
  7. ↑ Passman, Donald S. (2011), The Algebraic Structure of Group Rings, Dover Books on Mathematics, Courier Dover, p. 203, ISBN 9780486482064.
  8. ↑ 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.
  9. ↑ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2015-02-02.
  10. ↑ Pennsylvania State Championships Results, retrieved 2015-02-02.
  11. ↑ Berliner, Hans J. (1988), "Hitech Becomes First Computer Senior Master", AI Magazine, 9 (3): 85–87, doi:10.1609/aimag.v9i3.946.
  12. ↑ "Chess expert is no match for super-smart computer", Weekly World News, September 20, 1988.
  13. 1 2 Wall, Bill (August 7, 2007), Computers and Chess - A History, chess.com.
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