Women’s no. 1 Hou Yifan has set a new record by becoming the youngest full professor in the history of Shenzhen University at the age of 26. Hou Yifan, who recently studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, is now Professor of the School of Physical Education. Her goal is to make Shenzhen University into a major centre of chess, though chess fans will of course still be hoping to see Hou Yifan back in competition.
Hou Yifan was today made a full professor at Shenzhen University
She went on to win World Championship title matches against Humpy Koneru, Anna Ushenina and Mariya Muzychuk, but became disillusioned with the Women’s World Championship system where the title was decided in a knockout in alternative years.
Her achievements in open competitions include twice finishing second in the Gibraltar Masters and winning the 2017 Biel Chess Festival ahead of the likes of Harikrishna, Etienne Bacrot, Peter Leko, Ruslan Ponomariov and David Navara.
In 2018, however, she took a break in her chess career to study at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. Chess fans will have been hoping to see her make a full return to competitive chess, but today it turned out Hou Yifan has chosen to make a new step into academia!
Shenzhen is a Chinese city of 12 million people bordering on Hong Kong, that is already familiar to chess fans for its Shenzhen Masters chess tournament – won last year by Anish Giri. Hou Yifan isn’t turning her back on chess, since she’ll be heading the university’s chess program:
How to train high-level players to let them go further on their career path is naturally one aspect. However, after all, it is a minority that takes the career path, so I also hope to use chess to help improve the overall ability of students and cultivate their innovation - thinking.
Hou Yifan with the Dean of the Shenzhen Chess Academy Liu Shilan, herself a 7-time Chinese Women's Chess Champion
We wish Hou Yifan luck in her new venture, but also hope she decides to get back to some regular over-the-board events when chess life returns to normal!
We respect your privacy and data protection guidelines. Some components of our site require cookies or local storage that handles personal information.
Using chess24 requires the storage of some personal data, as set out below. You can find additional information in our Cookie Policy, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms of Website Use. Please note that your data settings can be changed at any time by clicking on the Data Settings link in the footer at the bottom of our website.
Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Comments 9
Be the first to comment!