Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 29)

by Becky Straw Magaly Spector ’85G, ’93G has overcome hardship, poverty, and devastating personal tragedy to become a chess champion, a distinguished scientist, and one of the nation’s most respected Hispanic women. Spector poses with her 6-year-old daughter in Cuba. In chess, the most vital piece is the king; lose him and you lose the game. But his mate reigns the checkered board. The queen is worth any two other pieces, with the exception of a pair of rooks. She can move forward, backward, and sideways for as many spaces as she pleases, capturing hapless rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns who obstruct her. Magaly Spector ’85G, ’93G was first introduced to the queen and her entourage of fighters when she was 14 years old. Although Spector lost her first game, the complexity of chess intrigued the girl who lived in meager conditions, even by Cuba’s standards. “Chess combined my interests in logic, science, and math,” she says. “I loved the analysis and strategy.” Spector borrowed a couple of books on chess strategy and tactics and, after reading them, she played her second game and won. “After that, I almost never lost a game,” she says. That year, she won the 1966 Cuban Scholar Chess Championship and, the next year, she placed second at the open Cuban Chess Championship. In 1978 and 1979, she was, the Cuban Chess Champion. Like the queen in chess, Spector has learned to move freely through life, overcoming obstacles, using her intelligence and training. Although she has been checked at times, she has never been checkmated. Spector was born in Cuba to Healing Game the a single mother who had only an elementary school education. Overcoming the odds and devastating personal tragedy, she has gone on to become a role model, earning recognition as one of the foremost Hispanic women by Glamour Magazine in Spanish, Reader’s Digest, Hispanic Business magazine, and Latina Style magazine. Her work in engineering received acclaim from the Hispanic Engineering National Achievement Awards Corporation in Los Angeles, and, in 2005, she became a Bell Labs Fellow, the highest distinction for a scientist in Bell Laboratories. Like chess, physics captured the young Spector’s imagination. She remembers as an eighth grader being intrigued by the science of matter and motion. “I could grasp its concepts, its beauty, and its well-fitting logic,” she says. In 1970, Spector got married and, a year later, the couple had a daughter, Kimberly. In 1972, Spector enrolled as a physics major at Havana University. While she attended classe s , h er gr a n d m o t h e r watched 1-year-old Kimberly, walking through hurricanes, storms, and searing heat to tend to the infant. So even with her grandmother’s help, Spector spent her evenings cleaning, cooking, and caring for her family. Only a f t e r they went to bed could she study. spring 2008 29 photo by Randy andeRson

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008

Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Alumni News Cover Story: In Galileo's Wake Technically Funny The Healing Game Looking for America The Last Word

Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.