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Michael Atiyah - Mathematics and chess (8/93)

3,742 views · Published 26 June 2017 · 1:24 · Indexed 18 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · People & Blogs

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British mathematician Michael Atiyah (1929-2019) studied in Cambridge where he became a Fellow of Trinity College and later held professorships at Princeton and Oxford. He is best known for his work on the K-theory and the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem. [Listener: Nigel Hitchin; date recorded: 1997]

TRANSCRIPT: And then the Headmaster, or the 'High Master' of the school, was Eric James who subsequently became Lord James and the first Vice Chancellor of York. He was… I saw a bit of him. Well it was through him I got to the school, because they had to persuade the school to take me and my father had a few friends who knew the people, and so he looked after… took an interest in my being there when I first arrived.  And he was a quite young headmaster and lively, but I also was taught by him too – we used to play chess together. He was a good chess player.

[NH] Were you good at chess?

I was quite good at chess. I played for the school team, and I have a record, I don't think I ever lost a game, something like that. Then when I came up to Cambridge I played for the Trinity chess team and for the university chess team and things, and I was reasonably good but not… I think the standards have gone up much higher since those days… and I found that eventually, you know, chess is not much of a relaxation for a mathematician. You know, you do your hard day's thinking, and then you sit down and do four-hour chess game – it's pretty exhausting. Eventually… if you're a serious mathematician, you can't do both, you know. A lot of chess players have been mathematicians, and at some stage they become professionals, either one or the other, and you know, you can't really… or it's very difficult to keep them both up simultaneously as it's much, much too similar activities.

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