Jonathan Rowson (born 18 April 1977) is a Scottish

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

grandmaster. He is a three-time British chess champion and was awarded the title of Grandmaster by

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

in 1999 . He was awarded an Open Society Fellowship in 2018 by the Open Society Foundations . He now works as an intellectual entrepreneur and civil society leader as co-founder and Chief Executive of Perspectiva.

Career

Rowson came second in the European Under 20 Championship in 1997 and achieved his third and final

norm Norm, the Norm or NORM may refer to: In academic disciplines * Normativity, phenomenon of designating things as good or bad * Norm (geology), an estimate of the idealised mineral content of a rock * Norm (philosophy), a standard in normative e ...

required for the title of Grandmaster in the 1999 Scottish Chess Championship. He went on to win the event again in 2001 and 2004, and went on to become the 2004 British Champion. He successfully defended his British title in 2005 and again in 2006. He also won the 2000

Canadian Open Chess Championship The Canadian Open Chess Championship is Canada's Open chess championship, first held in 1956, and held annually since 1973, usually in mid-summer. It is organized by the Chess Federation of Canada. The event celebrated its 50th rendition in 2013. ...

and tied for first with Vasilios Kotronias in the

Hastings International Chess Congress The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess tournament which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin t ...

in 2003/04. Rowson was Director of the Social Brain Centre at the RSA and writes for The Guardian's Behavioural Insights Blog, was formerly a columnist for the Herald newspaper, and has authored three books. In 2016, he founded the research institute Perspectiva in London together with Tomas Björkman.

Chess strength

Rowson's peak rating of 2599 was achieved in July 2005, when he was ranked number 139 in the world. In addition to winning the British Championship in three consecutive years, Rowson's best results include sharing first at the World Open in Philadelphia in 2002, at the Hastings Premier in 2003/4, and outright first at the Capo D'Orso open in Sardinia in 2008.

Books

Rowson has written numerous magazine articles and four books on the game: * ''Understanding the Grunfeld'' (1998). Gambit Publications. ; * ''The Seven Deadly Chess Sins'' (2000). Gambit Publications. ; * ''Chess for Zebras'' (2005). Gambit Publications. ; * ''The Moves That Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life'' (2019). Bloomsbury Publishing

References

External links

Jonathan Rowson
games at 365Chess.com *
Jonathan Rowson
at

Chessmetrics Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo and Edo rating systems. Implementation Chessmetrics is a weighted average of past performance. The score considers a player's ...

Interview with GM Jonathan Rowson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowson, Jonathan 1977 births Living people Harvard University alumni Chess Grandmasters Chess Olympiad competitors Scottish chess players British chess writers Alumni of Keble College, Oxford Scottish non-fiction writers Sportspeople from Aberdeen People educated at Aberdeen Grammar School