After Don Bradman, Jesse Owens, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, former World Chess champion, Viswanathan Anand is the latest sporting great to get a minor planet named after him.
Discovered on October 10, 1988 by Kenzo Suzuki in Japan, the planet has been named (4538) Vishyanand by a committee member of the Minor Planet Center that operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, USA.
The planet is located in an asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Since Suzuki didn’t name the planet within 10 years of discovery, the right to name the planet went to the International Astronomical Union. Michael Rudenko of the Minor Planet Center, an avid chess enthusiast, decided to name it after Anand, according to a Chess News report.
My two passions in life are astronomy and chess. I thought it might be appropriate to name a minor planet in honor of a chess grandmaster. My thoughts at once turned to Viswanathan Anand who, in addition to being the fifteenth world chess champion, is also an astronomy buff.
– Michael Rudenko
Since the official protocol is to use a maximum of 16 characters while naming minor planets, Rudenko had to shorten the name from Viswanathan Anand to Vishyanand.
The citation is now up on the website of Solar System Dynamics. It reads:
Viswanathan (Vishy) Anand (b. 1969) was India’s first chess grandmaster. He went on to become the fifteenth undisputed world chess champion. In addition to his passion for chess, he is also an avid astrophotography enthusiast.
Planets Named After Sportsmen
The Indian grandmaster is not the first one to have a planet named after him. Former world chess champions Alexander Alekhine (1909 Alekhin) and Anatoly Karpov (90414 Karpov) are already part of this club.
Also part of this elite group is legendary Australian batsman Don Bradman, four-time Olympic gold medalist American athlete Jesse Owens, tennis stars Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, cyclist Lance Armstrong and nine-time Olympic gold-medalist Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi.