Milan Vukcevich: A forgotten player

There have been fine chess players whose names are barely recognized today. I got to know one of them in the early 1970s, while I was a student at the university where he was the advisor of the chess club. Here is a synopsis of his story.

Milan Radoje Vukcevich was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1937. He was a somewhat unruly child, and when he was five years old his uncle bought him a chess set in an effort to distract him. At that point, Vukcevich later said that "I began playing with everybody willing---and at any time, forever and ever.” His uncle, reportedly a fairly strong player, coached him. 

Vukcevich began playing in tournaments at the age of 10. His first chess activity for which a record has survived was in 1955, when he won the Yugoslav junior championship and drew a 6 game match with Bent Larsen. He continued playing in his native country, and in 1963 he moved to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. at MIT. While a student there, he won the 1964 Massachusetts Open.

After earning his degree, he became a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. His next recorded chess games were from the 1969 U.S. Open, in which he tied for first place with Pal Benko and Robert Byrne. After that, he was invited to the U.S. closed championship each year, but he declined because the tournament schedule conflicted with his work.

There are no recorded chess games by Vukcevich for the next 6 years, though I know from personal knowledge that he did occasionally play in local and regional events. He also continued to compose problems, which he had been doing since the early 1960s or earlier.

In 1975, the U.S. championship was held during the summer, and Vukcevich participated. He came in third in the field of 12, ahead of Reshevsky, Bisguier, R. Byrne, and Larry Evans. Around that time, he left teaching and went to work as a scientist for General Electric, becoming the company's chief scientist in 1989. During his time at GE, his work earned him a nomination for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

In the 1980s, he was named a FIDE International Composition Grandmaster, and in 1998 he was inducted into the Chess Hall of Fame. His page at worldchesshof.org says that he “stands co-equal with Sam Loyd in the beauty and sophistication of his art”. Here is a mate in 8 that he composed and that appeared in Chess Life in 1986: http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2016/05/09/sunday-chess-problem-67/

Based on his strong results while playing only occasionally, it seems certain that Dr. Vukcevich had the ability to become a GM. He chose, however, to devote his energies to science. He died of cancer in 2003.

Besides his compositions, some of which can be found at different web sites, and the games that are available at chessgames.com and this site, he left behind two chess books which are unfortunately out of print and difficult (actually, impossible) to find: Chess by Milan — Problems and Games of Dr. Milan R. Vukcevich (1981), and My Chess Compositions (2003). (By the way, he did not write The Art of Attack in Chess; that was Vladimir Vuković. Vukcevich and Vuković played each other in the 1958 Yugoslav championship and produced a wild 18 move draw in which Vukcevich launched a fierce attack on Vuković’s king but had to settle for a perpetual check.)

I am always interested in hearing about fine players who are rarely, or never, heard of these days. Please let us all know of any you are aware of.

Great stuff, Mike. Very interesting. I'm going to try and find that Vuk vs. Vuk game. He did well to draw a match with Larsen and to finish third in a U.S Championship ahead of the likes of Reshevsky and Bisguier. Do you know what subject his PhD and subsequent teaching was in?

His Ph.D. was in metallurgy, which was the subject he taught at the university. After he left teaching for General Electric, his focus was on the science of luminescence.

Science was his passion, and chess was a sometime hobby. I have wondered what heights he might have reached in chess if it had been the other way around.

Absolutely. My understanding is that nowadays especially very few grandmasters are amateurs (in the proper sense of that word). Most are involved in the game on a full-time basis, needing to be so in order to keep up with theoretical developments, get to tournaments, etc., and very few have other jobs, at least near full-time ones. Once exception is the British grandmaster Luke MacShane who has been described in various places as the world's strongest amateur chess player. He works (or worked) in the financial sector in London, no doubt earning a lot more than most other grandmasters many of whom I guess struggle to make ends meet in pursuit of their chess ambitions.

culled from a review to the 1975 U.S. Championship:

Thank you all for some great posts. I'm not familiar with MacShane; must check him out.

Batgirl, you have a tremendous knack for pulling fascinating information from the depths of recorded chess history. Incidentally, Vukcevich did win the endgame against Tarjan. There was a crop of young American GMs in the 70s who left chess for other pursuits: Tarjan, Rogoff, Peters, Biyiasis, maybe others. Rogoff, who came in second in that 1975 US championship, is now a rather famous economist at Harvard.

Micky, that site has some very interesting stuff. I've bookmarked it.

Here is Ken Rogoff at the 1975 U.S. Championship:

For fun, here are the top 50 U.S. players active in 1975 (notice Vukcevich is #10):

Rogoff's profile on chessgames is interesting. He never contributes as far as I have ever seen, but his profile has been taken over by people who are always debating politics, and that alone. His Chess is forgotten, and has been for countless years. Rogoff must wonder what he did to deserve the attention.