Taken from:
Einstein and Go, by Robert A. McCallister
'When I first started to learn the game of go there was very little
available about it in the English language. A book that was in print at
that time was Dr. Edward Lasker's Modern Chess Strategy with an appendix
on Go. I immediately bought it and it provided me with a beginning. Later,
as I became involved in the New York City go world, I met Lasker, one of
the stronger players in the area in the early 1950s.
Lasker had first learned go around 1907, when an engineering student in
Berlin. His parents had wanted him to study medicine but he opted for
engineering, as it provided him the opportunity to study in Berlin. His
real interest at the time was chess, and Berlin offered him the chance to
study and improve his game.
He first became interested in go by watching Japanese students play and,
as he wrote, `with astounding perseverance and passion.' He used to visit
a cafe to play chess, and one evening a Japanese gentleman left his
newspaper. By looking at the game record in the paper, Lasker and his
friends began to appreciate go's complexity and this started his study of
the game.
After graduating, Lasker worked in England until World War I, then went to
the United States. By then he was a world-class chess player and quite
active in tournaments during the 1920s. Samples of his games can be found
in various books discussing chess activity of the time. I believe, though
am not certain, that he taught go to his cousin Emanuel Lasker, who became
the World Chess Champion at 24 by beating Steinitz and losing only to
Capablanca 26 years later. In any case, Emanuel Lasker became very
interested in go and developed into a fairly strong player.
Edward Lasker wrote Go and Gomoku, first published in 1934 and of much
interest, as it included the famous game between Junichi Karigane and
Honinbo Shusai, played in 1926.
Lasker and Albert Einstein were friends. On one occasion Lasker visited
Einstein in Princeton and presented him with an autographed copy of Go and
Gomoku. In exchange, Einstein gave Lasker an autographed copy of one of his
papers on relativity. Several years later, the autographed copy of Go and
Gomoku showed up in a used bookstore in Baltimore. When told about this
and asked what he thought of it, Lasker replied: `That's all right. I
left his relativity paper on the subway.'