{{Short description|German–French–English chess player and writer (1765/68–1850)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} thumb|right|230 px|Aaron Alexandre portrayed by Alexandre Laemlein (1844) '''Aaron (Albert) Alexandre''' ({{langx|he|אהרון אלכסנדר}}, around 1765/68 in Hohenfeld, Franconia – 16 November 1850 in London, England) was a German–French–English chess player and writer.
Aaron Alexandre, a Bavarian trained as a rabbi, arrived in France in 1793.<ref name=Saint-Amant>Saint-Amant [Pierre-Charles Fournier de], ''Nécrologie: A. Alexandre'', La Régence, 1st ser., 3, no. 1 (January 1851): 3–13.</ref> Encouraged by the French Republic's policy of religious toleration, he became a French citizen. At first, he worked as a German teacher and as a mechanical inventor. Eventually, chess became his primary occupation. He tried to make a complete survey of the chess openings, publishing his findings as the ''Encyclopédie des échecs'' (''Encyclopedia of Chess'', Paris, 1837). In this book, he used the algebraic notation and the castling symbols 0–0 and 0–0–0.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20020802121138/http://www.ktn.freeuk.com/cb.htm Knight's Tour Notes, Part Cb: Chronology 1800 – 1899<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref><ref>[http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft438nb2b6&doc.view=content&chunk.id=ch1&toc.depth=1&anchor.id=0&brand=eschol Crescendo of the Virtuoso "ch1"<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> In 1838, he won a match against Howard Staunton in London, though before Staunton became a master.<ref>David Hooper, Ken Whyld, The Oxford companion to chess (1984) page 326, and second edition p390.</ref> Alexandre was one of the operators of the fake chess-playing machine known as the Turk.<ref>Tom Standage, ''The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine'' (New York: Walker, 2002), 206.</ref>
==See also== * List of Jewish chess players
==References== <references/>
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexandre, Aaron}} Category:1766 births Category:1850 deaths Category:People from Kitzingen Category:18th-century German Jews Category:Jewish chess players Category:German chess players Category:19th-century German chess players Category:French chess players Category:British chess players Category:19th-century British chess players Category:German chess writers Category:French chess writers Category:British chess writers Category:18th-century French Jews Category:18th-century French writers Category:German emigrants to the United Kingdom Category:German emigrants to France Category:German male non-fiction writers Category:French male non-fiction writers Category:Naturalized citizens of France Category:Mechanical Turk operators Category:18th-century French male writers