Word: chess
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...youngest professor ever tenured at Harvard," said Lowell house math concentrator Sameer Satija '01. True. "He has the best endgame in the world," said Pranav Anand '01, another Lowell math concentrator. Nope. "But he did lose to the A.B.P. chess master," Anand added. That part's true. "I've heard he can bench about 300 pounds," Heidi K. Kim '01 said. Maybe, but he'll never admit it. Professor of Mathematics Noam Elkies is something of a Harvard living legend, though he doesn't really understand...
...about his talent and accomplishments in math, music, and chess, he'll be quick to tell you there are people more accomplished than he in each, even at this very school. Sure, but can they do all three? And whistle and hum in counterpoint? (A neat trick where he whistles a tune while simultaneously humming the accompaniment. And yes—he does take requests...
...Elkies' other passion is chess, though he was never the national champion. And when asked about his status as a chess master, he remarked that "A master is about halfway between your average chess player and Kasparov. There are thousands of masters in this country alone." But he admits that he apparently has a special talent in posing and solving chess problems—he won the world championship...
...Elkies believes his three main passions have a lot in common. "It's a way of thinking, or even of feeling about math, music and chess that it feels like one is applying a similar kind of aesthetic viewpoint...
...from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions." Sounds reasonable, except when you consider that it could be similarly said that our brains didn't evolve to invent computers, design spaceships, play chess and compose symphonies. John, I think we'll continue to be surprised by what the brains of scientists turn...