Max Euwe

Machgielis Euwe grew up Dutch, trained in mathematics, and played chess with the precision of someone who wrote proofs for a living. In 1935 he stunned the chess world by taking the World Chess Championship, holding it until 1937 — the only amateur ever to reach the summit. He went back to teaching and writing, but the game kept pulling him back. From 1970 to 1978 he served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, steering the politics of sixty-four squares through Cold War crossfire. He died in Amsterdam in 1981, having spent a life bridging the gap between the board and the bureaucr…