Alexander Reinefeld (born 1957) is a German computer scientist and games researcher. He is the head of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

Zuse Institute Berlin The Zuse Institute Berlin (abbreviated ZIB, or ''Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin'') is a research institute for applied mathematics and computer science on the campus of Freie Universität Berlin in Dahlem, Berlin, Germany ...

. His contributions to the field include the

NegaScout Principal variation search (sometimes equated with the practically identical NegaScout) is a negamax algorithm that can be faster than alpha-beta pruning. Like alpha-beta pruning, NegaScout is a directional search algorithm for computing the minima ...

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

Biography

Alexander Reinefeld studied physics at the

Technical University of Braunschweig The Technische Universität Braunschweig (unofficially University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology), commonly referred to as TU Braunschweig, is the oldest ' (comparable to an institute of technology in the American system) in Germany. ...

and computer science at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

and during two one-year visits in

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...

at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfor ...

. In 1982 he concluded his ''

Diplom A ''Diplom'' (, from grc, δίπλωμα ''diploma'') is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus ...

'' (equivalent to MSc) in computer science and in 1987 he received his Ph.D at the University of Hamburg. From 1983 to 1987, he worked as a scientific employee, and from 1989 to 1992 as assistant at the University of Hamburg. During the years 1987 to 1990 he collected industrial experience as a management consultant in the areas of

systems analysis Systems analysis is "the process of studying a procedure or business to identify its goal and purposes and create systems and procedures that will efficiently achieve them". Another view sees system analysis as a problem-solving technique that b ...

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

s and

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

building. In 1992 Reinefeld collaborated with the Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing (PC²) at the

University of Paderborn Paderborn University (german: Universität Paderborn) is one of the fourteen public research universities in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It was founded in 1972 and 20,308 students were enrolled at the university in the winter ...

. Since 1998, Alexander Reinefeld leads the area of Computer Science in the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB). He is a member of the

Gesellschaft für Informatik The German Informatics Society (GI) (german: Gesellschaft für Informatik) is a German professional society for computer science, with around 20,000 personal and 250 corporate members. It is the biggest organized representation of its kind in the ...

, the ACM, the

IEEE Computer Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

, the German university association Deutscher Hochschulverband (DHV) and Chair of Parallel and Distributed Systems at the

Humboldt University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

Search algorithms

In 1983 Alexander Reinefeld introduced the

search-algorithm, an improvement of

Judea Pearl Judea Pearl (born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief ...

's Scout. Ten years later, in 1993 Reinefeld made an attempt to resuscitate Stockman's SSS* algorithm, and proposed an improvement of the recursive RecSSS*, initially developed by Subir Bhattacharya and Amitava Bagchi. Despite promising results with some trees of depth 8, the space (memory) requirements were still too high, and with the research of Aske Plaat, Wim Pijls and Arie de Bruin concerning the

alpha–beta pruning Alpha–beta pruning is a search algorithm that seeks to decrease the number of nodes that are evaluated by the minimax algorithm in its search tree. It is an adversarial search algorithm used commonly for machine playing of two-player games ( ...

algorithm with zero windows and transposition table in SSS* and Dual* as MT, SSS* was finally declared "dead" by Pijls and De Bruin in 1996.

Chess programs

In 1979 at the University of Hamburg, motivated and supported by his advisor Frieder Schwenkel, Alexander Reinefeld designed the chess program ''Murks'', partly implemented in microcode for an Interdata M85 minicomputer. Reinefeld claimed that world chess champion

Mikhail Botvinnik Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, ( – May 5, 1995) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster. The sixth World Chess Champion, he also worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist and was a pioneer in computer chess. Botvinnik ...

played against ''Murks'' during his visit. In 1980/81, a team of four students, Manfred Allers, Dirk Hauschildt, Dieter Steinwender and Alexander Reinefeld, ported Murks to a

Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

microprocessor, then dubbed ''MicroMurks''. They built their own MC68000 microcomputer from scratch. ''Micromurks II'' represented by Dieter Steinwender, participated at the WMCCC 1983 in Budapest.

External links

* Alexander Reinefeld'
personal homepage
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Reinefeld, Alexander 1957 births Living people Computer chess people Place of birth missing (living people)