Chess Composer

🇺🇸Vladimir Nabokov

Literature

modernism

1912–1977

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

🇮🇱Yochanan Afek

Music

b. 1952

"I achieved more than I could dream of in chess and in chess composing."

🇺🇸Raymond Smullyan

Philosophy

1919–2017

"Is God a Taoist? by Raymond Smullyan, 1977."

Aleister Crowley

Literature

Thelema

1875–1947

"Love is a virtue; it grows stronger and purer and less selfish by applying it to what it loathes; but theft is a vice involving the slave-idea that one's neighbor is superior to oneself."

🇺🇸Noam Elkies

Mathematics

b. 1966

"I have a feeling it is more or less the same part of my brain which does both ... they speak to the same place, the same aesthetic..."

🇺🇸Wilhelm Steinitz

1836–1900

"I can spare the fame, but not the prize money."

🇩🇪Emanuel Lasker

Mathematics

1868–1941

"Put two players against each other who both have perfect technique, who both avoid weaknesses, and what is left?—a sorry caricature of chess."