Bobby Fischer: Brooklyn Prodigy, World Champion, Then Fugitive

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Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago in 1943 to Regina Wender Fischer, a Swiss-born nurse and teacher of Polish Jewish descent whose years at a Moscow medical school drew FBI surveillance. His birth certificate named German biophysicist Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, but FBI files and 2002 reporting point to Hungarian Jewish mathematician Paul Nemenyi, who paid support until his death in 1952. Bobby and his sister Joan learned chess in 1949 from a candy store set, and Bobby played against himself for hours. A Brooklyn Eagle inquiry led him to Brooklyn Chess Club president Carmine Nigro and later to master Jack Collins, whose library and table became his school. He won the U.S. Junior Championship at 13, played Donald Byrne in the 1956 Game of the Century, and became the youngest grandmaster at 15.

In the 1970 to 1972 candidates cycle he beat Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen 6 to 0 each, then Tigran Petrosian, and in Reykjavik in 1972 he forfeited game two over cameras and still took the title from Boris Spassky. In 1975 he refused to defend it against Anatoly Karpov when FIDE rejected some of his conditions, then vanished for nearly two decades. In 1992 he played Spassky in sanctioned Yugoslavia, spat on a U.S. Treasury warning at a press conference and triggered an arrest warrant. His later broadcasts promoted antisemitism and Holocaust denial and praised the September 11 attacks. Detained at Narita Airport in 2004 on a revoked passport, he was granted Icelandic citizenship and died in Iceland in 2008 at 64 after refusing treatment for kidney failure.

• A seven-year-old Fischer lasted about 15 minutes in a simultaneous exhibition against Max Pavey.
• He dropped out of Erasmus Hall High School at 16, saying there was nothing left to learn.
• In the Game of the Century he sacrificed his queen to launch a winning attack.
• His 1969 book My 60 Memorable Games remains standard reading.
• He patented the increment Fischer clock and created Fischer Random, now Chess960.