Martin Fierz

Martin Fierz (born July 18th, 1971) is a Swiss aerosol measurement expert, chess player, and programmer.
He is the inventor of the Diffusion Size Classifier (DiSC).

Biography
Early life
Martin Fierz learned how to play chess when he was about five years old. About five years later, he joined a chess club.
Fierz was fascinated with spaceships when he saw the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which inspired him to become an engineer.

Fierz became so interested in chess that he attempted to write a chess program, but failed. After several failed attempts, he decided to give up programming chess and try programming Connect Four instead. He decided to make a Connect Four program and compete it against his physics student, Andri Schaufelbühl who is also making a Connect Four program, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. As he felt more comfortable in making a chess program, he tried but again failed. Therefore, he thought of making a checkers program, which he got the idea from reading Time magazines about Marion Tinsley, a checkers player competing against Chinook, a checkers program. Also, he found out that programming checkers is not as complex as programming chess. Then he became very successful for programming CheckerBoard, the de facto English draughts program.

Currently, his interests are playing chess, climb mountains, and programming his checkers program, CheckerBoard.

Chess career
Fierz played Swiss Chess Championship in Pontresina. He wrote Muse, a chess program.

Physics

Martin Fierz studied physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, finishing with a diploma thesis in nonlinear optics, and wrote his dissertation at the group of Prof. H.C. Siegmann.
After a short postdoctoral stay at the University of Hawaii in the group of Prof. Klaus Sattler, he returned to Switzerland on 2002 to work at the group of Prof. Heinz Burtscher as a research scientist.

Martin Fierz is an expert in aerosol measurement (e.g. particulate matter from diesel cars), and the inventor of the diffusion size classifier (DiSC).

Fierz in court
Living in Switzerland, the Swiss army was attempting to put Fierz in prison. Fierz did not want to go to the army because he thinks that it is "useless and stupid" . He found out there is a unit looking for physicists and decided to go there. However, his attorney already decided on Fierz the day before he go to court, so he was never put in prison.

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