Q Are there any women chess masters?—David Zwerling, Portland, Ore.
A While men dominated the game for centuries, the same social advances that brought the world a great influx of female athletes in the 70’s also gave us a spate of fresh female faces on the chess scene, such as the amazing Polgar sisters of Hungary—grandmasters Susan, Judit, and international master Sofia—all of whom have notched significant tournament victories over men.
Source: http://www.parade.com
Here is an older article on Parade Magazine back in July 2005.
www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2565
Top 50 Smartest People in the world
1 Albert Einstein
2 Bill Gates
3 Marie Curie
4 Stephen Hawking
5 Condoleezza Rice
6 Bill Clinton
7 Sandra Day O’Connor
8 Oprah Winfrey
9 Warren Buffett
10 Jane Goodall
11 Steven Spielberg
12 Dalai Lama
13 Sally Ride
14 George S. Patton Jr.
15 Jon Stewart
16 J.K. Rowling
17 Dr. Phil (McGraw)
18 Ben Carson
19 Susan Polgar
20 Pablo Picasso
21 Rosalyn Yalow
22 Linda Buck
23 Yo-Yo Ma
24 Johnny Carson
25 Georgia O’Keeffe
26 Katharine Graham
27 Mary Matalin
28 James Carville
29 Meryl Streep
30 Sergey Brin
31 Toni Morrison
32 Dr. Ruth (Westheimer)
33 Jackie Chan
34 Quincy Jones
35 Hayao Miyazaki
36 Maya Lin
37 Meg Whitman
38 Edward Albee
39 Pat Summitt
40 Wynton Marsalis
41 Mikhail Baryshnikov
42 Martha Graham
43 Ralph Lauren
44 Bette Davis
45 Antonia Novello
46 Allison Fisher
47 Frank Gehry
48 Mike Nichols
49 Annie Duke
50 Annika Sorenstam
More than half the names on this list mean absolutely nothing to me: some of them are of little more importance than ‘American Celebs’, and the selection betrays very heavy American bias. It is therefore worthless and beneath the consideration of anybody with any claim to intelligence. For that matter, this dreadful American habit of ‘celebritizing’ (the best this, the greatest that, etc.) is damaging to real culture — culture being at a serious discount in our world of today. And we wonder why the globe is in such a mess!