Jonathan Schaeffer
Jonathan Schaeffer develops game-playing AI, including leadership of the Chinook checkers program and shared work on solving checkers. Schaeffer earned a Waterloo mathematics master’s degree in 1980, with a thesis on long-range planning in computer chess. He completed a doctoral thesis on search and knowledge in late 1985 and defended it in 1986. Ron Hansen’s chess source code supported the earlier work. Calculations ran from 1989 to 2007, and the team showed that perfect play in 8-by-8 checkers leads to a draw. The result appeared in Science.
- Now at
- University of Alberta
- Works
- 504
- Citations
- 7,759
- h-index
- 45
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1980–1986
Learning through computer chess
Schaeffer earned a Waterloo mathematics master’s degree in 1980, with a thesis on long-range planning in computer chess. He completed a doctoral thesis on search and knowledge in late 1985 and defended it in 1986. Ron Hansen’s chess source code supported the earlier work.
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1984–1994
An academic research setting
He began as a lecturer at Alberta in January 1984, before completing the doctorate. He became an assistant professor, associate professor and full professor in September 1985, July 1989 and July 1994. Game-playing programs provided a setting for his study of search and AI.
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1990–1995
The Chinook project
Schaeffer was Chinook’s lead author. Chinook qualified for the human checkers championship in 1990, lost the 1992 match and gained the title after its opponent withdrew in 1994. Chinook defended the title in 1995.
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2007
A solved checkers result
Calculations ran from 1989 to 2007, and the team showed that perfect play in 8-by-8 checkers leads to a draw. The result appeared in Science.
Sources and credits
Photo: Scott Mair, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY 2.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
