Monroe (Monty) Newborn

Co-author of the computer chess program Ostrich, which competed in five world championships through the 1970s and 1980s and nearly won in 1974, Newborn has also served as Chairman and principal organizer (along with Ben Mittman) of the Computer Chess Committee for the Association of Computing Machines. He has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, and later a Professor of Computer Science at McGill University in Montreal.

He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University in 1967. He served as an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at Columbia University in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 1967 to 1975. In 1975, Newborn joined the School of Computer Science at McGill University, remaining with the School thereafter and serving as its Director from 1976 to 1983.

He has served as President of the International Computer Chess Association from 1983 to 1986, and as chairman of the ACM Computer Chess Committee from 1981 until 1997. In that capacity, he organized the first Kasparov versus Deep Blue match (known as the ACM Chess Challenge) in 1996. The following year, Newborn served as head of the officials at the second Kasparov versus Deep Blue match, won by Deep Blue.

Octopus and Theo, two automated theorem-proving programs developed over fifteen years, became the primary focus of his work. Both competed in the 2006 World Championship for ATP Systems in Seattle, Washington. Octopus, a multiprocessor version of Theo, ran on 133 PCs in the School's laboratories during the competition, searching in parallel for proofs of theorems chosen by the competition's organizers. In the 2004 competition, Octopus performed admirably, solving more theorems among those that no entry had seen before than any other entry, and both Octopus and Theo finished best of the North American entries.

Newborn is the author or co-author of several books, including: Deep Blue: An Artificial Intelligence Milestone, Springer-Verlag, 2001; Automated Theorem Proving: Theory and Practice, Springer-Verlag, 2001; Deep Blue: Computer Chess Comes of Age, Springer-Verlag, 1997; How Computers Play Chess, with D. Levy, W.H. Freeman, NY, 1991; All About Chess and Computers, with D. Levy, Computer Sci Press, Potomac, MD, 1982; More Chess and Computers, with D. Levy, Computer Sci Press, Potomac, MD, 1980; and Computer Chess, Academic Press, NY, 1975. He has also published a number of research papers.