Viswanathan Anand

New Delhi, June 1: World chess champion Viswanathan Anand will simultaneously play against 40 mathematicians in Hyderabad this year — a tournament conceived four years ago by a Mumbai mathematician.

Anand will play against volunteers chosen from among delegates and participants at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), 2010, a quadrennial conference to be hosted for the first time by India this August, the organisers said.

“We want something unique in the congress’s cultural programme, keeping in mind the origin of chess in India,” said M.S. Raghunathan, a mathematician at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and the chairman of ICM 2010.

“I am quite looking forward to attending the congress and maybe even hearing some lectures,” Anand said in a statement issued through the ICM 2010 secretariat today.

Anand said in the statement that when he won his first grandmaster title, someone had presented him the book, The Man Who Knew Infinity, a biography of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujam.

“That was my first introduction to a mathematician,” said Anand, who has been described by the ICM 2010 secretariat as a keen follower of developments in mathematics and science and an avid reader of books on mathematics. “Chess and mathematics are closely linked,” Anand said. “A lot of our methodology in problem solving (is) similar,” he said.

The 40-against-one tournament will require Anand to shift from table to table. “This format poses a greater challenge to the grandmaster — and more mathematicians will get an opportunity to play against him,” Raghunathan said.

Raghunathan had first conceived the idea of requesting Anand to play against mathematicians while he was at the previous ICM in Spain in 2006. At an event hosted by the Indian ambassador in Spain, some of the Indian delegates at the congress had approached Anand, who agreed to take part in the tournament.

About 2,700 delegates from over 50 countries are expected to converge in Hyderabad for the congress to discuss research advances in all disciplines of mathematics.

“We haven’t decided who’s going to play against him,” Raghunathan said. If there are too many applications, we may draw up lots, if the number is close to 40, we may try and pick the best chess players.”