Robert Hyatt

Robert Morgan Hyatt (born 1948) is an American computer scientist and programmer. He co-authored the computer chess programs Crafty and Cray Blitz which won two World Computer Chess Championships in the 1980s. Hyatt was a computer science professor at the University of Southern Mississippi (1970–1985) and University of Alabama at Birmingham (1988–2016).

Robert Hyatt
Born
Robert Morgan Hyatt

1948 (age 72–73)
Laurel, Mississippi, US
Alma materUniversity of Southern Mississippi
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Known forCrafty, Cray Blitz
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science, programming, computer chess
InstitutionsUniversity of Southern Mississippi
University of Alabama at Birmingham
ThesisA High-Performance Parallel Algorithm to Search Depth-First Game Trees (1988)

Early life and education

Hyatt was born in Laurel, Mississippi in 1948. He earned both a bachelor's degree in 1970 and a M.S. in 1983 from the University of Southern Mississippi. His master's thesis was titled Cray Blitz: A Computer Chess Playing Program.[1] Hyatt earned a Ph.D. in computer and information sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1988. His dissertation was titled A High-Performance Parallel Algorithm to Search Depth-First Game Trees. Bruce Wilsey Suter was Hyatt's doctoral advisor.[2][3]

Career

Hyatt is co-author of the computer chess program Crafty[4][5] and the co-author of Cray Blitz,[6][7] a two-time winner of the World Computer Chess Championships.[8][9] He has been actively involved in computer chess since he first started to program a computer to play chess in 1968. These efforts have been supported by various computer vendors such as Univac (1978), Cray Research (1980–1994), and more recently AMD via their developer's lab. Crafty is freely available both in executable form (from many different web sites) and in source form (from Hyatt's home page). Crafty presently participates in many computer chess tournaments (and an occasional human chess tournament). An old version of the source of Cray Blitz is also available on the internet for those interested in seeing what computer chess looked like in the late 1980s.[10][11]

Hyatt taught computer science for 46 years, from 1970 through 1985 at the University of Southern Mississippi and from 1985 through 2016 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He retired in 2016 as an associate professor of computer science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences (1988–2016).[12]

References
  1. Hyatt, Robert Morgan (1983). Cray Blitz: A Computer Chess Playing Program (M.S. thesis). University of Southern Mississippi. OCLC 1141215962.
  2. Hyatt, Robert Morgan (1988-12-01). "A High-Performance Parallel Algorithm to Search Depth-First Game Trees". ICGA Journal. 11 (4): 165–166. doi:10.3233/icg-1988-11411. ISSN 2468-2438.
  3. Hyatt, Robert Morgan (1988). A High-Performance Parallel Algorithm to Search Depth-First Game Trees (Ph.D. thesis). University of Alabama at Birmingham. OCLC 19098206.
  4. Newborn, Monty (2 April 2011). Beyond Deep Blue: Chess in the Stratosphere. ISBN 9780857293411.
  5. Martin, Grant (2007). "40 Years of Breakthroughs". UAB Magazine. Retrieved 2021-01-13.
  6. Computer Chess Compendium. 29 June 2013. ISBN 9781475719680.
  7. Müller, Karsten; Schaeffer, Jonathan (30 October 2018). Man vs. Machine: Challenging Human Supremacy at Chess. ISBN 9781941270974.
  8. "And Still Champion: Cray's Chess Computer". The New York Times. 1986-06-17. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-01-13.
  9. Byrne, Robert (1986-10-12). "Computers Tie for the Championship". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-01-13.
  10. Newborn, Monty (2 April 2011). Beyond Deep Blue: Chess in the Stratosphere. ISBN 9780857293411.
  11. Knudsen, John C. (2000). Essential Chess Quotations. ISBN 9781893652170.
  12. "Retirements" (PDF). Minutes of the November 3, 2016 meeting of the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama. University of Alabama System. pp. 181–182. Retrieved 2021-01-15.
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