Duncan Forbes

28 April 1798, Kinnaird, Perthshire - 17 August 1868, St. Andrews

From the BCM 1963, p 219: Educated at Perth Grammar School and St. Andrews, where he took his M.A. degree in 1823. In the same year he received an appointment in the Calcutta University, but resigned and returned to England in 1826. In 1837 he was appointed Professor of Oriental Languages at King's College, London, retiring in 1861. From 1849 to 1855 he also worked on making a catalogue of the collection of Persian MSS. for the Trustees of the British Museum. His History of Chess was published in 1855.

From The Oxford Companion to Chess, by David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, p 121: Scottish writer on chess history, professor of oriental languages. In 1854 and 1855 he wrote a series of articles in the Illustrated London News, collected and published as Observations on the Origin and Progress of Chess etc. (1855). The History of Chess (1860) was agreatly enlarged exposition of his theories. In his common-sense way he demolished the more fanciful claims regarding the origin of chess, but he succumbed to the temptation of inventing evidence to support his belief that the game is 5,000 years old. 'The false prophet has taken us all in', said van der Linde, who, with Professor Albrecht Weber (1821-1901), discovered that the sources quoted by Forbes did not contain the attributed references. Later scholarship established that in any case these sources were at least 2,500 years younger than had been thought in Forbes's time. Regarded by his contemporaries as a monument to scholarship, Forbes's History is now ignored. 'He did not even make good use of the material known to him', wrote J.G. White in 1898.

Compiled by Alan McGowan