Greg Hjorth Onlinetributes.com.au

I was fortunate to have been a chess player at the time in the early 1980s where I met Greg. I had known him through the chess literature long before I actually befriended him in 1983 at the Australian Championships in Sydney. The last time we played he was already an international master well on his way to devote his time to academia.

I must say that as a creative person, he stood head and shoulder above the rest. He applied his unique creativity and sheer genius to all walks of life including chess, mathematics, philosophy, daily life and his incredible cheeky sense of humour. It was always a pleasure to see Greg debate another top chess player on the circuit. I remember once being in a pizzeria with a group of chess players debating if losing an arm is negative because of the loss or positive because he are fortunate to have the other arm left. Greg had the unique talent of being able to approach anything from a uniquely Hjorthian direction.

It is sad to see him go, even though I have lost touch with him for a number of years now. I am glad he lived with intensity and purpose, with flair and zest, with passion and no limits. He was a true free-spirit of the kind you only meet once in your life time.

Thank you Greg for having inspired me like you inspired many others.

Jean-Georges Estiot

This is the obituary that appeared in today's Times of London

Professor Greg Hjorth

Australian prodigy who shone at chess but then switched his focus to mathematics and made far-reaching contributions to set theory
Greg Hjorth was one of those gifted individuals who are torn between the abstract beauties of higher mathematics and advanced chess. In Hjorth’s case, after a coruscating start to his chess career, he opted to become a mathematician by profession. He advanced to the point where his close colleague, and fellow Karp prizewinner, Alexander Kechris, described his ideas as “a series of stunning and far-reaching contributions in the field of set theory”. These included the development of striking new concepts, the most celebrated of which is now called Hjorth’s Theory of Turbulence.

Over the chessboard, Hjorth was a prodigy who battled on equal terms with such giants of the game as Garry Kasparov, Sammy Reshevsky and England’s Tony Miles, against whom Hjorth won a crucial game in the 1984 British championship.

Hjorth was part of the talented generation of Australian juniors that grew up during the 1970s. He represented Australia at the 1982, 1984 and 1986 Chess Olympiads, and was also a three-times winner of the prestigious Australian competition the Doeberl Cup, in 1982, 1985 and 1987. Many regarded him as one of the great future talents of Australian chess, but mathematics became his chief focus, limiting his opportunities for tournament play. Over the past 20 years he entered a handful of events in the US, where he was working, and also played in Melbourne upon his recent return to Australia. In his final outing in such a contest, he scored a clean sweep in seven games against strong opposition.

His zenith as a chess champion had come at the Commonwealth Championship at Melbourne in 1983. For all his prodigious brilliance, the 20-year-old Hjorth was regarded as too erratic to compete for high honours, but he went on to share first prize and the title of Commonwealth Chess Champion with the future grandmaster Ian Rogers.

Hjorth had this piece of stern advice for young hopefuls: “If the aim is to have fun, then I would suggest trying not to burst into tears when you lose. If the aim is to become a professional, then if you can’t get into the top 100 by the time you are 21, have a good hard rethink.”

This pronouncement became highly relevant to his own chess progress, when, at the 1984 Commonwealth Championship in Hong Kong, he signally failed to retain the title he had won so brilliantly the year before. He continued to compete on the international chess scene for the rest of that year. He opted for mathematics, even though Fide, the World Chess Federation, had awarded him the title of International Master that very year. By the close of 1984 most of Hjorth’s chess successes already lay behind him.

Gregory Hjorth was born in 1963 in Melbourne. He showed his outstanding abilities from an early age. His interests focused on mathematics, chess, with which mathematical ability is often linked, and philosophy.

He was no believer in what he dismissed as the myth of natural genius, and it was hard work and commitment which marked his approach both to mathematics and to chess — which became a passion at 6, when he and his parents, Robert, a neurologist, and Noela, an artist, were living in London. Having learnt the rules, “there was no stopping him,” his father recalled. The family returned to Australia in the early 1970s and Hjorth attended Preshil and St Michael’s schools in Melbourne. So prodigiously talented was he at mathematics that the story was told of him completing an advanced maths exam so quickly that he fell asleep at the desk and had to be woken to prevent his snoring disturbing more tardy examinees.

Meanwhile, Hjorth began his rapid ascent of the chess heights, his Silver Medal in the 1979-80 Australian championship, when he was 16, heralding the arrival of a big new talent. For decades Australian chess had been dominated by the éminence grise Cecil Purdy, chess teacher par excellence and the first World Correspondence Chess Champion. Purdy, though, had died during a game in Sydney at the age of 73 in 1979. Australian chess was ready for a fresh injection of young blood.

Hjorth’s bachelor’s degree was earned in mathematics and philosophy at the University of Melbourne. This was followed by a PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in 1993, under Professor Hugh Woodin. Hjorth’s thesis was awarded the first Sacks Prize from the Association of Symbolic Logic “for his research in descriptive set theory and its surprising consequences concerning the relationship between set theory and large cardinals”.

Hjorth held a post-doctoral position at Berkeley from 1993-95, when he joined the faculty of the Mathematics Department; he became a full professor in 2005. Since 2006 he spent two quarters of each year at the University of Melbourne, on an Australian Research Council professorial fellowship. He received (with Alexander Kechris) the Association of Symbolic Logic’s Karp Prize in 2003, and was Tarski Lecturer at Berkeley from 2009-10.

Proof is the essence of mathematics, and mathematical knowledge is the most certain knowledge we have. Thus, to those with a philosophical turn of mind, it is the logical foundations of mathematics that are particularly fascinating. Mathematical logic is closely linked to the subject of set theory. Woodin, Hjorth’s doctoral supervisor, is the acknowledged leader in the interplay between the two. The area continues to be a very active one; Hjorth’s work within it focused on a number of themes, including descriptive set theory (it is difficult to describe very highly infinite sets), and large cardinals (used to measure the size of such sets).

Hjorth was a highly productive and creative research mathematician; he wrote more than 60 papers and one book. Dedication to his work and commitment also governed other aspects of his life, including a commitment first to vegetarianism, then veganism, based not on health reasons, but on a refusal to cause suffering to animals.

Hjorth’s personal blog was a curiously wistful compilation, warning his PhD students about the career implications of becoming a professional academic mathematician, not to mention the perils of devoting one’s life to career chess. His blog was conspicuously headed by the ominous, Sioux Indian-inspired observation: “Perhaps today is a good day to die.”

He and his wife, Beth, separated in 2003 after ten years of marriage.

Professor Greg Hjorth, mathematician and International Chess Master, was born on June 14, 1963. He died of a heart attack on January 13, 2011, aged 47