Personalia

This August starts with one of the few ladies among our members, Susanne van Kempen from Leverkusen had her anniversary on 1st August. We had introduced her as a new member two years ago, obviously she is active in her chess club Schachverein Opladen 1922 e.V. and moreover she is a member of a famous German chess family: her father Gerhard Hund (teleschach.de) and her sisters Barbara and Isabel Hund are certainly known to all chess friends. As the genealogy on Teleschach shows, there is also an eminent scientific authority among her ancestors, her grandfather was the famous physicist Prof. Friedrich Hund (1896-1997!) who established the Hund’s rules – these have become integral part of each textbook of nuclear physics for a long time.

Our Belgian friend Henri Serruys could celebrate an anniversary as well, he looked back on 6 decades on 4th August. We know our cash auditor and ex libris expert not only from his first introduction in August 2004 but particularly from quite frequent encounters at KWA meetings or at book auctions in Brunswick, we remind only of the last board meeting from this year’s July. Henri has also contributed a compilation of the plates in L’Echiquier Revue Internationale d’Échecs (1925-1939) to our reprint Chess Christmas (2006).

After 4 years (see August 2004) it’s also our deputy chairman’s turn again, on August 13th Jurgen Stigter celebrated his 55th birthday which he didn’t spend in Amsterdam though but during his holidays in the most southern corner of France. Presumably he has made himself the finest present by the article which appeared on him in the latest New In Chess: Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam has once more translated an interview into a text very worth reading – enjoy the most interesting portrait "For the love of books. Jurgen Stigter’s dream of a universal chess bibliography" (NIC 2008/5, p. 76-82), it should be a compulsory reading for all collector friends.

Only two days later a further Dutch member had his special day, the prominent arbiter Geurt Gijssen turned 74. As was to be expected he carries on being untiringly active as an author ("An Arbiter’s Notebook" at ChessCafe.com) and naturally as an arbiter at top events, with regard to the latter we would like to offer a video trailer showing Geurt Gijssen next to Ljubomir Ljubojevic (analyzing): http://www.youtube.com/... (at the Corus tournament 2008). Otherwise we refer to preceding tributes, only the last year's one should be linked here.

Jón Adólf Pálsson now makes his debut in our column, he is the first of four KWA members who have seen the light of day on August 20th – it was already 78 years ago with him. He lives in the Icelandic town of Kópavogur (the second largest city of Iceland, to the south of Reykjavik) and belongs to the group of Icelandic new members who reinforced our association in this year’s April. As a player he was so strong that he was appointed to the Iceland team in 1962 and represented his national colours at the chess olympiad in Warna (Bulgaria). Moreover he got the International Master title in correspondence chess in 1981 (SIM 1999) and he is the Icelandic CC delegate at the ICCF.

We would like to welcome an additional new member, Jan Kalendovský from Brno joined the KWA only recently, now we are able to congratulate him on his 61st birthday. The Czech chess historian should be well-known to all book collectors as he has produced a fair number of publications as author and coauthor, we only call to mind the Complete Games of Alekhine I-III (with Vlastimil Fiala) or The Complete Games of Oldrich Duras, and he has also contributed to a Czech chess encyclopedia (Jirí Veselý, Jan Kalendovský, Bedrich Formánek. Malá encyklopedie šachu. Olympia 1989). Just recently he presented a tournament book on Prague 1908 (together with Zdenek Závodný) which you will still find in our announcements of New Literature.

The third man of our "quartet from 20/08" is Wolfgang Remin who celebrated his 55th birthday. We had presented him in our 2004 column, but in the last years we didn’t hear from him any more ...

On the other hand Robert Coffman from St. Paul (Minnesota) can offer a real anniversary, half a century has gone by for him. In his career he works as a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin in River Falls (Associate Professor and Department Chair, see the corresponding entry on the university web site). Regarding chess he has a predilection for problem chess and its literature, furthermore he spends quite a lot of time on our KWA web site (recommended as an example!) and he is also trying hard to improve his knowledge of German by frequent reading.

Finally an additional 50th birthday: Our Danish member Per Skjoldager could look back on five decades on 22nd August. Obviously our Nimzowitsch expert carries on working on a biography of the great Dane which he strives to complete in cooperation with Jørn Erik Nielsen. He has reported on his Nimzowitsch project at the Nordic Meeting in April, 2006 (see the gallery 3: In Fredriksværk - Per Skjoldager's talk), and by his article "Nimzowitsch in Dänemark" he has supplied a remarkable contribution to the Nimzowitsch issue of KARL (3/2006). As a player he is still active in his club Skakklubben Evans, but according to the club homepage he is meanwhile not a member of the board any more.

Congratulations!




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