Milan Vukcevich

Vukcevich was born in Belgrade. In 1955 he won the Yugoslav Junior Championship, drawing a six game match with Bent Larsen[?] in the same year. He became a chess International Master[?] in 1958, and in 1960 played for Yugoslavia at the Chess Olympiad in Leipzig and had the second best overall score at the Student Chess Olympiad in Leningrad. In 1963 he moved to the United States, settling in Ohio.

Vukcevich decided on a career in science rather than chess, and in the year he moved to the United States he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He went on to teach at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio for six years before leaving to work as chief scientist for General Electric. He was considered for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and published two books on science.

Vukcevich continued to play chess. In 1969 he was joint winner of the US Open chess tournament with Pal Benko[?] and Arthur Bisguier[?] and in 1975 he finished third in the US Championship ahead of Samuel Reshsevsky[?], Robert Byrne[?], Benko and Bisguier among others.

Vukcevich is better known as an author of chess problems than as a player, however, being the first American resident to be awarded the title of International Composition Grandmaster by FIDE. In 1981 he published Chess by Milan: Problems and Games of Dr. Milan R. Vukcevich and in 1998 was inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame, becoming only the second person (after Sam Loyd) to be primarily inducted for their acheivements in problem composition.

Vukcevich died in 2003 in Cleveland.

External links

• "The Beauty of Bristol" (http://user.sezampro.yu/~mivel/BRISTOL.HTM) - an essay by Vukcevich on the Bristol problem theme
• A biography and selection of Vukcevich's problems (http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=954)
• Obituary from cleveland.com (http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1052905142293670.xml)
• The Week In Chess (http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic) - issue 446 includes an obituary and twenty-two previously unpublished games