In 1973, a 13-part television series called “The Ascent of Man” was broadcast. It was written and presented by a mathematician whose first post-university chess club was in Hull. In time he moved to London, where there is still in service a chess trophy bearing his name.

While in his first academic job, as a mathematics lecturer at University College, he played for Hull in the Woodhouse Cup. Having won the Hull Championship in 1935, he went on to win the Yorkshire Championship in 1936. In round 2 of that Yorkshire Championship he played C North of Sheffield, making a genuine exchange sacrifice in the middle game, and, after eventually recouping the exchange through positional pressure, executed a particularly aggressive endgame clean-up, from which his opponent may have taken days to recover!

Click here for the game C North 0-1 Jacob Bronowski.

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The final of the 1936 Yorkshire Championship was played at Goole, as a half-way house between Hull and Sheffield, between Jacob Bronowski and Arnold Yorwarth Green of Sheffield (later of London). Green went for a rather dubious line in the Slav Defence to the Queen’s Gambit. In time some complicated play developed, but Bronowski held on and emerged the victor.

Click here for the game Jacob Bronowski 1-0 A Y Green.

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Click here for more biographical data regarding Jacob Bronowski.

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