Kester Svendsen

James Kester Olaf Svendsen (May 25, 1912 – October 5, 1968) was an American educator, scholar, author, and chess administrator. In 1938 he was awarded a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina. That credential allowed him to take a teaching position at the College of Charleston until 1940 when he relocated to Norman, Oklahoma, to join the University of Oklahoma (OU) faculty as an associate English professor. In 1952 Svendsen was awarded a fellowship in English literature by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.^[1]

In 1956, Harvard University Press published his book, "Milton and Science", which took him more than ten years to complete. As a scholar, he specialized in the study of the 17th-century poet John Milton and was president of the John Milton Society. Svendsen was one of the original founders of the Oklahoma Chess Association in 1946. In 1959 Svendsen left OU to take up a post as head of the University of Oregon English Department. He was a prolific writer on the subject of chess and had a regular column published in Chess Life magazine.