| Name | Was Known As | Age of Retirement | Ostensible Reason | Became |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steven Demetre Georgiou (1948–) | Cat Stevens; singer / songwriter, teen idol, folk artist | 29 | Converted to Islam | Yusuf Islam; supporter of fatwa against Salman Rushdie; aid worker in war-torn Bosnia; secular musician again in 2006 with An Other Cup |
| Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) | Chess grandmaster; child prodigy, finicky opponent | 29 | Disagreed with World Chess Federation over playing conditions; experienced increased feeling of paranoia | Eccentric anti-Semite; played first match in 20 years in 1992 against Boris Spaasky in Yugoslavia and won $3.65 million; renounced U.S. citizenship |
| Greta Garbo (1905–1990) | Actress; star of European silent pictures and of Hollywood talkies | 36 | Horrified by poor reviews for Two-Faced Woman | Recluse; traveled extensively; embodied her famous line from Grand Hotel, “I want to be alone” |
| Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) | Avant-garde artist; inventor of ready-mades, prankster | 36 | Abandoned art for chess because it had “all the beauty of art—and much more” | Chess master and journalist; wrote treatises on hypermodern endgame positions |
| Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) | Poet; homosexual, absinthe drinker | 19 | Shot with a revolver by his lover poet Paul Verlaine; exhausted his interest in poetry | Soldier in Dutch colonial army in Java; foreman for construction company at a stone quarry in Cyprus; coffee and weapons trader in Yemen and Ethiopia |
| Peter Abelard (c. 1079–1142) | Leading scholastic theologian and lecturer; master dialectician | 40 | Disgraced and castrated for having seduced and impregnated Héloïse | Monk; attempted to teach again, but his work was declared heretical and burned; wrote The Story of My Misfortunes |
