Alan McGowan was born in Glasgow, Scotland, where he also went to school and learnt to play chess. In a chess book in the school he came across the games and writings of the German master Kurt Richter, who is famous for bold attacking chess. McGowan started to collect everything he could on Richter and his life and in 2018 he published a huge and comprehensive biography about Richter that met wide critical acclaim. McGowan now lives in Waterloo, Ontario in Canada.

Alan is a reasonable club player and after leaving school he worked for American Express (4 years), Strathclyde Police (13 years, mostly in the Criminal Investigation Department-CID). In 1988 he emigrated to Canada where he worked for the singer/musician Loreena McKennitt and the Federal Government as a passport officer.

He is now retired and works as a historian/archivist for Chess Scotland https://www.chessscotland.com/documents/history/latest_additions.htm.