Importance for chess:
Rice gambit: 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 Nf6 6.Bc4 d5 7.exd5 Bd6 Very important chess patron

http://chesshistory.com/winter/wint...

<RICE, ISAAC LEOPOLD> Lawyer, industrialist and chess player. He was born in Wachenheim, Germany, 1850 and died in New York, <1932>. He came to U.S. with his parents when six years old and settled in Philadelphia. Later he went to Paris for his education and became a <correspondent> for the Philadelphia "Evening Bulletin." Returning, he settled in New York and acquired a reputation as a <music teacher>.In 1880 he was graduated from the Columbia Law School, and became <lecturer in political science> and instructor there (1882-86). In 1893 he began to take an interest in electricity, and in 1897 became <president of the Electric Storage Battery Company>. He was president of the Manhattan Chess Club and invented the "Rice Gambit.">

RICE, Isaac Leopold,
author, born in Wachenheim. Bavaria, 22 February, 1850. He was brought to the United States in 1856, educated at Philadelphia high-school, and studied music in that city and in 1866-'8 at the Paris conservatoire, acting while there as correspondent of the Philadelphia "Evening Bulletin." He taught music and languages for some time in England, and in the autumn of 1869 established himself as a music-teacher in New York city. He was graduated at Columbia law-school in 1880, founded the academy of political science, and was lecturer and librarian of the political science library of Columbia in 1882-'3, and then entered on the practice of the special branch of railroad law, acting also as instructor in Columbia college law-school till 1886. He was one of the founders of the "Forum" in New York city in 1885, and, besides articles on political science, has published "What is Music ?" (New York, 1875) and " How Geometrical Lines have their Counterparts in Music" (1880).

(Edited Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography)

<‘Within a few weeks I accumulated enough money to move over to a game of plafond at the Café [de la] Régence, which was and still is a famous chess center. There Bonar Law, who was later Prime Minister of England, used to play chess with Russian revolutionists; and Isaac Rice, the father-in-law of P. Hal Sims, used to bend all his energies and spend a great deal of money with chess professionals in propaganda for the Rice Gambit.’>

Source: Edward Winter's "Ely Culbertson and Chess" (2005)

"NOISEPROOF ROOM
Chess Expert Contrives a Way to
Escape Noise on Boats.

Proof against all the din of street and river is the soundproof shelter deep in the foundations of the villa of Mr and Mrs Isaac L Rice, at No. 170 Riverside Drive. The Rices are the successful leaders of a campaign against the superfluous whistling of the craft which ply in the Hudson, and are also the pioneers of a movement which is to bring into being the Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noises.

Mr Rice is one of the best known patrons of the game of chess in the United States and the inventor of a gambit which has given him a high place among the experts who move knights and bishops over the checkered board.

Chess is a game which requires quiet and contemplation. When Mr Rice invited his friends to tournaments he found that the caterwauling of the sirens of the steam tugs which went up and down the river exerted a disturbing influence. He would have had to give up playing the game entirely perhaps had it not occurred to him that in the foundation of his house was a space which could be readily utilized as a soundproof refuge.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gener...>

Holland develops his submarine prototypes, funded by Irish nationalists in America, with the eventual aim of attacking British shipping. As it happens, Rice's company ends up selling Holand's design to the Brits to develop their own naval submarines.