Bobby Fischer

Robert James Fischer won his first of eight US Championships at fourteen, a prodigy who dismantled the tournament field. In 1972, after sweeping Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen 6-0 and defeating Tigran Petrosian, he took the world title from Boris Spassky in Reykjavík - a Cold War spectacle that pulled more attention than any chess match before or since. Three years later he refused to defend against Anatoly Karpov when terms with FIDE collapsed, and the title passed by default. He disappeared, resurfacing in 1992 for an unofficial rematch against Spassky in embargoed Yugoslavia; the US issued a warrant and he lived as a fugitive. Arrested in Japan in 2004 for using a revoked passport, he was eventually granted Icelandic citizenship and died there in 2008. His contributions - My 60 Memorable Games, the increment timing system, Fischer random chess - remain embedded in the game, even as his late-life antisemitism and Holocaust denial, despite his Jewish ancestry, became inseparable from his name.