Personalia

This month two members from the British Isles head our birthday list: directly on the first of the month Mike Sheehan celebrated his special day, he turned 71. There is however nothing new to tell about him, so we just turn to the second birthday.

It dates 5 years back that Owen M. Hindle was mentioned in our column (see March 2005), now – on March 14th - he could look back on full seven decades. In the meantime he has participated in our London meeting 2007, so you will find photos of him (and Mike Sheehan) in our pictorial report The Knights and Kings of Chess.
In the sixties Owen Hindle was one of the strongest English players, he was British lightning champion of 1965, took part in the Chess Olympiads 1964 and 1966 and reached second place in the British Championship at Whitby 1964. Moreover he represented England in the Zonal tournament 1967. Here is one of his favourite games from the tournament Hastings 1963/64 and an additional game from the British Championship 1962.
With a series of books Owen Hindle has also distinguished himself as a chess author: Piatigorsky Cup Los Angeles July 1963 (Nottingham, s.a.); Further Steps in Chess (London, 1968 and 1976 [2nd ed.]); J.H. Blackburne: The Final Years (Nottingham, 1998); "The English Morphy"? The Life and Games of Cecil de Vere, First British Chess Champion (with Bob Jones; Exmouth, 2001) - on that a further link (with an additional photo of Owen Hindle); The Mystery of Edward Pindar, Chess Nomad (Ostrava, 2005).

At the beginning of the year Norbert Geissler joined our association, on the occasion of his 52nd birthday on March 22nd he should be briefly introduced here. The native-born Ulmer works as a graduate computer scientist in Munich where he also lives with his family. He is largely known in the world of problem chess, there he has made a name for himself as a composer of artistically demanding fairies and helpmates (more than 600 problems to date); for a fairly long time he is an active member of the mpk (Munich problem circle), and he was considerably involved in the further development of the popular problem solving programme Popeye. The first résumé of his "problem life" already appeared 1991 in Caissas Schloßbewohner vol. 4, a more detailed presentation followed 1999 in Franz Pachl’s book Schach mit Partner (Kuhn/Murkisch series No. 30) where two photos were included as well. A laudatory article due at his 50th birthday (written by Dieter Werner) is to be found in the April 2008 issue of the Schwalbe.

Our Amsterdam member Robert van de Velde celebrated his 73rd birthday on March 26th. As is generally known, he has enriched the Lasker monograph (published last November) with a chapter on bridge (a partial advance publication appeared in SCHACH 6/2009, p. 55-59), and there were also pleasing reactions in the Dutch paper De Volkskrant (see the links at our page Press Review). Bob still joined in our last January meeting at Wijk aan Zee, and for the upcoming general meeting at Antwerp he has already announced his participation.



Congratulations!




PS: You will find all previous birthday greetings in our archives!