Mikhail Donskoy

Home * People * Mikhail Donskoy

Mikhail Donskoy [1] Mikhail Vladimirovich Donskoy, (Михаил Владимирович Донской, September 9, 1948 - January 13, 2009 [2])

was a Russian computer scientist and chess programmer. He studied at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, where his teachers include Alexander Kronrod and Georgy Adelson-Velsky, and was also affiliated with the Moscow State University where he had to appeal professor Mikhail R. Shura-Bura with his programming skills [3]. By 1971, Mikhail Donskoy joined with Vladimir Arlazarov and Anatoly Uskov to program the successor of the ITEP Chess Program on an ICL 4/70 at the Institute of Control Sciences, called Kaissa [4] , which became the first World Computer Chess Champion in 1974 in Stockholm [5] . The development of Kaissa was accompanied by Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Vladimir Arlazarov, Anatoly Uskov and Alexander Bitman.

From 1982 Mikhail Donskoy was the chief system programmer for the INES DBMS, the INES archive system original programmer. Since 1989 he was leader of the programmers group later growing into DISCo (Donskoy’s Interactive Software Company). Mikhail Donskoy died at age 60.

Quotes#

Quote from Mikhail Donskoy’s life cycle of a programmer [11]:

When I was in high school I learned to program on the [M-20](M-20 "M-20") ... In the group of programmers at [Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics](Institute_of_Theoretical_and_Experimental_Physics "Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics"), where computing work was done on [nuclear physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_physics) on the M-20, they came up with [arrays](Array "Array"), [lists](Linked_List "Linked List"), the need for [subroutines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subroutine) and more. One of my teachers, [Georgy Adelson-Velsky](Georgy_Adelson-Velsky "Georgy Adelson-Velsky") came up with a [hash memory](Hash_Table "Hash Table"). Details can be found in another of my teachers - [Alexander Kronrod](Alexander_Kronrod "Alexander Kronrod") "Conversations about programming". Even before [Dijkstra's](Mathematician#EWDijkstra "Mathematician") basic principles of [structured programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_programming) was known, [Alexander Brudno](Alexander_Brudno "Alexander Brudno") published the book "Programming in meaningful notation." There was also created the first chess program ... The [chess program ITEP](ITEP_Chess_Program "ITEP Chess Program"), the predecessor of [Kaissa](Kaissa "Kaissa") fit in memory of M-20, namely in 4096 cells, each of which has a 48-bit ...

See also#

• Georgy Adelson-Velsky and Mikhail Donskoy at University of Waterloo
• History of Kaissa

Selected Publications#

1975 …#

• Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Vladimir Arlazarov, Mikhail Donskoy (1975). Some Methods of Controlling the Tree Search in Chess Programs. Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 361-371. ISSN 0004-3702. Reprinted (1988) in Computer Chess Compendium pp. 129-135. [12]
• Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Vladimir Arlazarov, Mikhail Donskoy (1977). On the Structure of an Important Class of Exhaustive Problems and Methods of Search Reduction for them. Advances in Computer Chess 1
• Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Vladimir Arlazarov, Mikhail Donskoy (1979). Algorithms of adaptive search. Machine Intelligence 9 (eds. Jean Hayes Michie, Donald Michie and L.I. Mikulich), pp. 373-384. Ellis Horwood, Chichester.

1980 …#

• Mikhail Donskoy (1980). From Russia with Games. Personal Computing, Vol. 4, No. 5, pp. 77 » Kaissa
• Г.М. Адельсон-Вельский, В.Л. Арлазаров, А.Р. Битман, М.В. Донской (1983). Машина играет в шахматы, pdf (book with detailed explanations of Kaissa algorithms, language: Russian)
• Georgy Adelson-Velsky, Vladimir Arlazarov, Mikhail Donskoy (1988). Algorithms for Games. Springer
• Mikhail Donskoy, Jonathan Schaeffer (1988). Report on the 1st Soviet Computer-Chess Championship or re-awakening a sleeping giant. ICCA Journal, Vol. 11, Nos. 2/3 » First Soviet Computer-Chess Championship 1988
• Mikhail Donskoy, Jonathan Schaeffer (1989). Perspectives on Falling from Grace. Workshop on New Directions in Game-Tree Search, pdf, revised version in Computers, Chess, and Cognition

1990 …#

• Mikhail Donskoy, Jonathan Schaeffer (1990). Perspectives on Falling from Grace. Computers, Chess, and Cognition
• Mikhail Donskoy (1990). Fundamental Concepts in Search. ICCA Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3
• Mikhail Donskoy, Jaap van den Herik, Bob Herschberg (1990). Finessing in Games. ICCA Journal, Vol. 13, No. 4
• Mikhail Donskoy (1991). Fundamental Concepts in Search. Advances in Computer Chess 6

2000 …#

• Mikhail Donskoy (2001). How the Computer-Chess Methods Help to Build Better User Interfaces. Advances in Computer Games 9
• David Levy (2009). Mikhail Donskoy - An Obituary. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1

External Links#

• Mikhail Donskoy from Wikipedia

• Mikhail Donskoy’s ICGA Tournaments

• “Каисса” - Историю программы рассказывает один из ее создателей Михаил Донской (Russian)

• Михаил Донской: Жизненный цикл программиста - ПОЛИТ.РУ (Russian) Mikhail Donskoy - The life cycle of a programmer translated by Google Translate, polit.ru August 20, 2008

• История компьютерных игр from the Russian Virtual Computer Museum (Russian)

• Владимир Крамник против программы DeepFritz - человек против машины? (Russian)

• Памяти Михаила Донского (1948-2009) (Russian) - He’s always done exactly what was interesting to him by Mikhail Blinkin, translated by Google Translate, polit.ru, January 14, 2009

• Computer chess pioneer Mikhail Donskoy passes on from ChessBase News, January 16, 2009

• In memory of Mikhail Donskoy

• Articles by Mikhail Donskoy from the Russian Virtual Computer Museum (Russian)

• Interview with Mikhail Donskoy, part 2, YouTube Video

• From the movie “Alternativa”, 1975

Mikhail Donskoy in 1975 (28:25 - 30:33). The ICS RAS computer room (8:33 - 14:49):

References#

1. ↑ Computer chess pioneer Mikhail Donskoy passes on from ChessBase News, January 16, 2009
2. ↑ Памяти Михаила Донского (1948-2009) (Russian) - He’s always done exactly what was interesting to him by Mikhail Blinkin, translated by Google Translate, polit.ru, January 14, 2009
3. ↑ Михаил Донской: Жизненный цикл программиста - ПОЛИТ.РУ (Russian) Mikhail Donskoy - The life cycle of a programmer translated by Google Translate, polit.ru August 20, 2008
4. ↑ История компьютерных игр from the Russian Virtual Computer Museum
5. ↑ KAISSA by Bill Wall
6. ↑ Photos of Mikhail Donskoy, gifts by Monroe Newborn, hosted by The Computer History Museum
7. ↑ Tony Marsland, Monty Newborn (1981). A brighter future for Soviet computer chess? ICCA Newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 1, pdf
8. ↑ Monroe Newborn and Soviet computer chess developers in Moscow, Gift of Monroe Newborn, 1980
9. ↑ Computer chess pioneer Mikhail Donskoy passes on from ChessBase News, January 16, 2009
10. ↑ Kaissa & Botvinik by Shay Bushinsky, rgcc, October 16, 1997
11. ↑ Михаил Донской: Жизненный цикл программиста - ПОЛИТ.РУ (Russian) Mikhail Donskoy - The life cycle of a programmer translated by Google Translate, polit.ru August 20, 2008
12. ↑ Method of Analogies?? by Bruce Cleaver, CCC, May 29, 1998

Up one level