Bobby Fischer

Robert James "Bobby" Fischer (born March 9, 1943) is a former world chess champion, who on September 1, 1972 became the only American to win the FIDE World Chess Championship. He lost the title when he refused to defend it on April 3, 1975. Garry Kasparov wrote that of all world champions of chess, the skill gap between Fischer and his contemporaries was the largest in history {{ref|Kasparov}}. Fischer is also well known for his eccentricity, unconventional behavior, and outspoken, anti-Semitic political views. Despite his prolonged absence from competitive play, or perhaps because of it, Fischer is still among the best known of all chess players.

Early years

Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Regina Wender, a naturalized American citizen of Jewish Polish ancestry who was born in Switzerland, raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and later became a teacher, registered nurse and physician. His father was reportedly Wender's first husband, Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German biophysicist; the couple married in 1933 in Moscow, U.S.S.R., where Wender was studying medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute. Though Hans-Gerhardt Fischer is listed as the father on Robert Fischer's birth certificate, a 2002 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer stated that Fischer's biological father was Paul Felix Nemenyi, a Hungarian Jewish physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project on the development of the atomic bomb {{ref|Nicholas}}. Nemenyi paid child support for Bobby Fischer during his infancy and early childhood. Later, F.B.I. research determined that although Fischer's mother had returned to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1939, her first husband never entered the country after that date, making it improbable that Bobby Fischer, born in 1943, was Hans-Gerhardt Fischer's child. Despite the fact that at least one of his parents was Jewish, Fischer has vehemently denied being a Jew in several public interviews, and blames the mischaracterization on a Jewish conspiracy to defame him.

Related Topics:
Chicago, Illinois - Regina Wender - American - Jewish - Switzerland - St. Louis - Missouri - Hans-Gerhardt Fischer - German - Moscow - U.S.S.R. - The Philadelphia Inquirer - Paul Felix Nemenyi - Manhattan Project

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The Fischers divorced in 1945 when their son was two years old, and Fischer grew up with his mother and older sister, Joan. In 1948, the family moved to Mobile, Arizona, where Regina taught in an elementary school. The following year they moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Regina worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse.

Related Topics:
Mobile, Arizona - Brooklyn, New York

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In May 1949, six-year-old Bobby learned how to play chess from instructions found in a chess set that his sister bought at a candy store below their Brooklyn apartment. Bobby saw his first chess book a month later. For over a year he played chess on his own. At age 7, he joined the Brooklyn Chess Club and was taught by the club's president, Carmine Nigro. When Fischer was 13, his mother asked John W. Collins to be his chess teacher. Collins had taught several top players, including Robert Byrne and William Lombardy. Fischer spent much time at Collins's house, and some have described Collins as a father figure for Fischer. Fischer attended but dropped out of Erasmus Hall High School, where many teachers remembered him as difficult. According to school records, he has an I.Q. of 180 and an "incredibly retentive memory."

Related Topics:
Brooklyn Chess Club - Carmine Nigro - John W. Collins - Robert Byrne - William Lombardy - Erasmus Hall High School - I.Q.

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