Monty Newborn Professor
School of Computer Science
McGill University
Monty Newborn received his Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University in 1967. He was an assistant professor and then associate professor at Columbia University in the Department of Electrical Engineeering and Computer Science from 1967-1975. In 1975, he joined the School of Computer Science at McGill University and has been with the School since then, serving as its director from 1976-1983.
His interests center around search problems in artificial intelligence where two areas are of particular interest: chess-playing programs and automated theorem-proving programs. He has published six books on these subjects and a number of research papers as well. He served as Chairman of the ACM Computer Chess Committee from 1981 until 1997 and in that capacity organized the first Kasparov versus Deep Blue match (known as the ACM Chess Challenge) in 1996 and then served as head of the officials at the second match in 1997. Through the 1970s and 1980s, his chess program Ostrich competed in five world championships, coming close to winning in 1974.
His favorite past-times are tennis and photography.
2005
Tuesday Mar 15, 2005 globe
Chess legend must be deported to U.S., Japan says
Bobby Fischer shouldn't be exempted from regulations sending foreigners home, officials argue
Friday Dec 17, 2004 cbc
 ICELAND OFFERS VISA TO CHESS WIZARD BOBBY FISCHER
Iceland has offered a residency visa to Bobby Fischer, but the former
U.S. chess champion faces obstacles to get there because he remains in
jail in Japan under an American deportation order.
Sunday Aug 1, 2004 cbc
BOBBY FISCHER LOSES DEPORTATION APPEAL IN JAPAN
Former world chess champ Bobby Fischer lost a match against Japanese
immigration officials late Tuesday when they refused to reverse a
decision to deport him to the United States.
Sunday Feb 9, 2003  Kasparov draws against computer
The latest Man v Machine chess series ends in a tie - as Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov plays it safe during the final game.
...Deep Junior turned down the offer of a draw on the 23rd move, but offered its own draw five moves later. There were boos in the crowd when Kasparov accepted,
...Deep Junior is capable of analysing three million moves per second, and is itself the three-time chess computer world champion.
Kasparov was also tied going into his final game with Deep Blue in 1997 - which he lost.
...Kasparov and Deep Junior's programmers each won $250,000 for the match. Kasparov earned another $500,000 just for taking part.
February 6, 2003 nyt  More Chess Players Use Computers for Edge
When Mr. Kasparov famously lost his species' hold on the chess crown to a refrigerator-size I.B.M. computer called Deep Blue in 1997, chess was still played very much as it had been for centuries. Since then, as advances in computing speed have enabled software on a standard PC to rival the supercomputers of an earlier era, a generation of human players has been seduced into dependence on silicon assistance.
A version of Deep Junior, the chess program that is playing Mr. Kasparov this week, can be bought for $50, as can rival programs with names like Fritz and Shredder. Players use the software to analyze the strength of any particular move and to simulate an opponent's many possible responses several moves out.
"We don't work at chess anymore. We just look at the stupid computer, we follow the latest games and find small improvements. We have lost depth." Evgeny Bareev, the world's eighth-ranked player.
Kasparov vs Deep(er) Blue Match
The match ended 3½-2½ in IBM Deep Blue's favour.
Monroe Newborn, Monty Newborn / Hardcover / Published 1996
Synopsis
Written by the organizer of this historic match, this book provides a whistle-stop tour of the development and history of chess-playing computers. As the development comes to its culmination in Philadelphia, the Deep Blue team and Gary Kasparov are profiled and each of the historic six games is provided in full with a detailed commentary. The Foreword is written by chess grandmaster Yasser Seirawan, who provided lively commentary throughout the match. 16 illus.
Deep Blue can calculate more than a 100 million
chess moves a second and IBM programmers think
they can make the machine 10 times stronger for
a possible rematch next year. Newborn says there
is no question that computers will one day reign
supreme in the world of chess. "It's only a
matter of time."
Professor Monroe Newborn, of the School of Computer Science, has been named a Distinguished Alumnus of the Ohio State College of Engineering, where he completed his master's and doctoral degrees. A former director of McGill's School of Computer Science and expert in computer chess, Newborn earlier this year chaired the organizing committee of the Association for Computing Machinery Chess Challenge, which pitted world champion Garry Kasparov against IBM's Deep Blue.
Citation
In recognition of his organization of and continuing efforts in the annual ACM Computer Chess Championship. Throughout the 20 years of the event, he has been a major force in its operation, has authored one of the competitors (OSTRICH), and has encouraged young ACM members to develop computer chess programs and to compete.
Prof. Newborn has studied problems related to search for over 20 years. Search is a fundamental problem in artificial intelligence and is at the heart of designing good programs to solve of a wide variety of problems. Of particular interest has been the subject of chess-playing programs and theorem-proving programs. The basic search strategies used to solve these two apparently different problems are remarkably similar and have evolved over the years.
His research on chess-playing programs has centered around analyses of the efficiency of the alpha-beta algorithm, the correlation between chess program strength and computer speed, the choice of appropriate data structures, and parallel search. The chess program OSTRICH competed in most of the major tournaments for computers from 1972 through 1988. It has to its credit a draw with the former chess championship in Stockholm in 1974. In 1981, OSTRICH became the first chess program to compete in a major tournament using a multiprocessing system, a Data General system consisting of five Nova computers.
In recent years, Prof. Newborn's interest has shifted to developing a theorem-proving program. Many of the search strategies used by OSTRICH and other chess programs carry over the theorem-proving programs. In particular, he has developed a theorem-proving program called The Great Theorem Prover that uses iteratively-deepening depth-first search coupled with the use of a large hash table. It compares favorably with leading theorem-proving programs when tested on standard test sets.
Future research will stress new approaches to theorem proving, attempts to increase the strength of The Great Theorem Prover, and techniques for parallel search.
New York Friday, January 31 Computer beats Kasparov in chess game
— A blunder cost chess legend Garry Kasparov the third in a series of championship games with supercomputer Deep Junior on Thursday. "I had a complete blackout," Mr. Kasparov said. "Despite Deep Junior having a great team and grandmaster trainers, I had great positions." Mr. Kasparov sacrificed a pawn, one his least-powerful pieces, hoping to further strengthen his position. But the sacrifice actually left him vulnerable, and Deep Junior capitalized on the mistake. Seeing few options, Mr. Kasparov conceded. The six-game series is tied at 1 1/2 games each. Mr. Kasparov won the first game Sunday; the second on Tuesday was a draw. The next game is Sunday. Mr. Kasparov, 39, said he becomes fatigued during the games, which can last for hours, while the computer doesn't. "I have to work on that," he said. The match is sanctioned by the World Chess Federation, which will pay Mr. Kasparov $500,000 (U.S.), and another $300,000 if he beats Deep Junior, which has not lost a match against a human in two years. The games can be followed live on the Web site of X3D Technologies, one of the match's sponsors. Mr. Kasparov lost to IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997. He claimed the computer may have been given hints by humans.
try  6x6 Los Alamos chess
Some books by Monty Newborn
- Kasparov Versus Deep Blue: Computer Chess Comes of Age
- Automated Theorem Proving: Theory and Practice
- Deep Blue: An Artificial Intelligence Milestone
- How Computers Play Chess
- All About Chess and Computers: Containing the Complete Works, Chess and Computers
Kasparov Versus Deep Blue: Computer Chess Comes of Age
by Newborn, Monty, and Newborn, Monroe
Written by the organizer of the historic match between the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov and the chess-playing computer known as Deep Blue, this book provides a fascinating tour of the development and history of chess-playing computers. As the development comes to its culmination at Philadelphia in February of 1996, the Deep Blue...
Automated Theorem Proving: Theory and Practice with Disk
by Newborn, Monty, and Newborn, Monroe
This book/software package introduces the reader to automated theorem proving and provides two approaches implemented as easy-to-use programs. The author shows how the two approaches, semantic tree theorem proving and resolution-refutation theorem proving, work and provides numerous examples for readers to try their hand at theorem-proving...
Hyatt, R. and Newborn, M. Crafty goes Deep, International Computer Chess Association Journal, v. 20, no. 2, 1997, pp. 79-86.
Kasparov versus Deep Blue: Computer Chess Comes of Age, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1997, pp. 322.
Outsearching Kasparov in the Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics: Mathematical Aspects of Artificial Intelligence, American Mathematical Society, v. 55, 1998, pp. 175-205.
Newborn, M. More on the relation between the performance of search programs and computer speed Proceedings of the Computer Strategy Game Playing Workshop, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, May 26, 1995, pp. 27-33.
A eulogy for Mikhail Moiseivich Botvinnik, International Computer Chess Association Journal, v. 18, no. 2, June 1995, pp. 91-92.
Almulla, M., and Newborn, M. The practicality of generating semantic trees for proofs of unsatisfiability,
International Journal of Computer Mathematics, v. 62, no. 1-2, 1996, pp. 45-61.
Yu, Q., Almulla, M., and Newborn, M. Heuristics for a semantic tree theorem prover, Proceedings of the Fourth
International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics, Fort Lauderdale, January 4-6, 1996, pp. 162-165.
Newborn, M. The Great Theorem Prover - Version 2, Montreal, Newborn Software, 1994.
Yu, Q., Almulla, M. and Newborn, M., Heuristics used by HERBY for semantic tree theorem proving, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, v. 23, no. 3, 1998, pp. 247-266.
Newborn, M., Outsearching Kasparov, eds. Frederick Hoffman, Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics: Mathematical Aspects of Artificial Intelligence, American Mathematical Society, 1998, pp. 175-206.
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