Mikhail Botvinnik

Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik was born August 17, 1911, and became the first world-class chess player to develop entirely within the Soviet Union. He won his sixth World Chess Championship and shaped the post-World War II title system, then engineered the coaching apparatus that made Soviet dominance inevitable for decades. He worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist, pioneering computer chess and earning an honorary mathematics degree for it. His analytical method became doctrine. He died May 5, 1995, having trained three world champions and left a school in his image.