Feng-Hsiung Hsu
American computer scientist and electrical engineer (born 1959)
Who was Feng-Hsiung Hsu?
Feng-hsiung Hsu (Chinese: 許峰雄; pinyin: Xǔ Fēngxióng; born January 1, 1959) (nicknamed Crazy Bird) is a Taiwanese-American computer scientist and electrical engineer. After graduating from National Taiwan University with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in electrical engineering, he came to the United States. He started his graduate work at Carnegie Mellon University in the field of computer chess in the year 1985. Hsu was the architect and the principal designer of the IBM Deep Blue chess computer. As a child, he played Xiangqi, chess, and Go. In 1988 he was part of the "Deep Thought" team that won the Fredkin Intermediate Prize for Deep Thought's grandmaster-level performance.
Historical significance
His work led to the creation of the Deep Thought chess computer, which led to the first chess playing computer to defeat grandmasters in tournament play and the first to achieve a certified grandmaster-level rating. He was awarded the 1991 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for his contributions in architecture and algorithms for chess machines. He is the author of the book Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion.