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Robert (Bob) Hyatt is a retired Associate Professor of computer science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences (1988–2016). Hyatt taught computer science for 46 years.1970-1985 University of Southern Mississippi and 1985-2016 University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Hyatt is co-author of the computer chess program Crafty and the co-author of Cray Blitz, a two-time winner of the World Computer Chess Championships.He has been actively involved in computer chess since he first started to program a computer to play chess in 1968.These efforts have been supported by various computer vendors such as Univac (1978), Cray Research (1980-1994), and more recently AMD via their developer's lab. Crafty is freely available both in executable form (from many different web sites) and in source form (from Hyatt's home page). Crafty presently participates in many computer chess tournaments (and an occasional human chess tournament). An old version of the source of Cray Blitz is also available on the internet for those interested in seeing what computer chess looked like in the late 1980s.
Hyatt was born in Laurel, Mississippi in 1948. He earned both a Bachelor's degree in 1970 and a Master's degree in 1983 from The University of Southern Mississippi. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1988.