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Anderson feted for 'Go' contributions, Feb. 10
Posted February 2, 2007; 05:57 p.m.
Philip Anderson, the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics Emeritus at
Princeton, will receive a lifetime achievement award from Nihon Ki-in,
the association of Japanese professional Go players and teachers,
during a ceremony at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10, in the Frist Campus
Center Multipurpose Room.
Officials from Nihon Ki-in and the president of the New York Go Center
will present Anderson, an accomplished Go player, with a diploma during
the New Jersey Open Go Tournament, which is the state championship and
a major regional event for the Asian board game.
The award recognizes Anderson's contributions to the establishment of
Go culture in New Jersey. A diploma of this kind done in the Japanese
shodo style of calligraphy has been awarded only three times previously
in the United States to physicist Albert Einstein, chess player and
author Edward Lasker, and astronaut Daniel Barry.
Anderson traveled to Japan in 1953 as the country's first Fulbright
scholar in physics and there first encountered Go, a board game similar
to chess and checkers. He remained an avid player during his years at
Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., and later at Princeton. A
renowned solid state physicist, Anderson received the Nobel Prize in
1977 for his work on the electronic structure of magnetic and
disordered systems.
About 80 players from the tournament are expected to join Anderson for
the award ceremony. The New Jersey Open is one of the oldest
tournaments in the United States. For more information, contact 1973
Princeton alumnus Rick Mott at rickmott@alumni.princeton.edu.