Los Alamos Chess

Re:Los Alamos Chess by keid on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @07:21PM (#39911927)

I knew one of the authors, Mark Wells. After he retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory he moved, temporarily, to Las Cruces, NM, to be head of the CS department at New Mexico State University, so became my boss as a student employee in the department. I don't recall his authorship of the chess program being mentioned by any of the profs or grad students (it was a very small department). When I moved to Los Alamos many years later I discovered that he lived just down the street--they'd kept their house in Los Alamos while in Las Cruces and had returned (for the skiing, he said).

The first article linked below has some details about the chess program not in the Wikipedia article.

Chess was his (serious) hobby; his research was in programming language design, specifically concerning type theory.

https://ladailypost.com/former-lanl-mathematician-computer-s...

https://ladailypost.com/obituary-mark-brimhall-wells-oct-7-2...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Los Alamos Chess by chemeril on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @07:50PM (#39912106)

I'd keep a house for the skiing at Pajarito too! For those reading along it's certainly worth the trip if you're in the area.

I have a vague recollection of coming across a physical 6x6 chessboard somewhere on lab property and found it a little odd, but never knew it had ties to MANIAC. Lots of history floating around in that place.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Los Alamos Chess by QuantumSeed on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @07:33AM (#39916074)

I was at NMSU during his time as head of the CS department. His interest in chess inspired to write my first chess playing program

[ Parent | on HN ]