The 65th birthday of Michael Negele

On February 22^nd our Honorary Member Dr. Michael Negele celebrated his 65^th birthday. This day coincided with the day on which, although still informally, the new Board of the CH&LS took office and during the following weeks in which the transfer of tasks took place this special day for our Honorary Member passed unnoticed. So, prior to our warmest congratulations we have to apologise for our lack of awareness to look on time on the birthday calendar!

Michael belonged to the founding fathers of the CH&LS, that started almost 20 years ago as Ken Whyld Association, a small group of collectors, bibliographers and historians. The idea was to connect the few people around the world that were interested in chess book collecting, in problems of chess bibliography, and in chess history, and to exchange information, data, books, and to try to build a kind of ‘wiki’ chess bibliography. The early members of the informal Association had the hope that the number of members could grow up to at most 30, but to a large extent thanks to Michael’s boundless energy, first as treasurer and later as chairman, the membership expanded within 10 year to almost 200 members. When you dive into the historical pages of our website, you can get an impression of his activities and his contributions, for instance when you look under Archive, especially under Expeditions of Michael Negele. During that period he was a true ambassador of the Association.