Judit Polgar

Judit Polgár (born July 23, 1976) is a Hungarian chess player. Easily the strongest female chessplayer in history, she was ranked 8th in the world in the October 2005 FIDE rating list with an ELO rating of 2735, the only woman on FIDE's Top 100 Players list. She became a Grandmaster in 1991 at the age of 15 years and 4 months, beating the previous record for youngest Grandmaster, set by none other than Bobby Fischer in 1958.

Background

Judit Polgar comes from a Jewish family background in Budapest, Hungary. (A number of her family members were killed in the Holocaust, and her grandmother was a survivor of Auschwitz). She and her two older sisters (Zsuzsa (GM) and Zsófia (IM)) were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis. László and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject.

Related Topics:
Jewish - Budapest - The Holocaust - Auschwitz - Zsuzsa - Zsófia - László Polgár

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The rest of Judit's family eventually emigrated (Zsófia and her parents to Israel, Zsuzsa to New York), but Judit remained in Hungary and married Gustav Fonts, a veterinary surgeon from Budapest.

Related Topics:
Israel - Hungary - Veterinary surgeon

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