Paul Rushton

Home * People * Paul Rushton

Paul Gerald Rushton, (born April 15, 1949) a English-born, Canadian mathematician, chemist, computer scientist and chess programmer. He holds undergraduate degrees from Dalhousie University in mathematics, chemistry and education, and a M.Sc. in computing science from University of Alberta, with a thesis titled A Critique of Programming Techniques for Playing Chess. As a graduate student he started to write his first chess-playing program, and continued his research on techniques for chess and game playing programs of that time, and published several papers on that topic along with Tony Marsland.

=Early Research= Beside the ideas and incomplete programs by Jack Good and Mikhail Botvinnik, following chess programs were investigated by Paul Rushton and Tony Marsland as published in 1973.
 * Chess 3.5
 * Coko
 * Greenblatt Chess Program
 * NSS
 * Tech
 * Wita

=Restart= Paul Rushton went into business for 27 years but returned to teaching computing at University of the Fraser Valley in 2000, where he restarted his chess research and the development of a goal-directed knowledge-based chess-playing program that learns, which he continues after his retirement in 2010.

=Selected Publications=
 * Paul Rushton (1972). A Critique of Programming Techniques for Playing Chess. M.Sc. thesis, University of Alberta
 * Paul Rushton, Tony Marsland (1973). Current Chess Programs: A Summary of their Potential and Limitations. INFOR Journal of the Canadian Information Processing Society Vol. 11, No. 1, pdf
 * Tony Marsland, Paul Rushton (1973). Mechanisms for Comparing Chess Programs. ACM Annual Conference, pdf
 * Tony Marsland, Paul Rushton (1973). A Study of Techniques for Game-Playing Programs. Journal of Computer Science, Vol. 4, No. 2, pdf
 * Tony Marsland, Paul Rushton (1974). A Study of Techniques for Game-Playing Programs. Advances in Cybernetics and Systems (ed. J. Rose), Vol. 1, Gordon & Breach, pdf

=References= Up one level