Bobby Fischer was a chess genius who became one of the greatest chess players the world has ever seen. He was born on March 9, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Brooklyn by his mother, a Swiss-born registered nurse and schoolteacher. Fischer first learned the game of chess at age 6 and eventually became the youngest international grandmaster at the age of 15. He won the world championship in 1972, beating Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a match that was widely seen as a Cold War proxy battle.
After the championship match, Fischers behavior became increasingly erratic, and he became known for making anti-Semitic remarks despite the fact that his mother was Jewish. He refused to play Anatoly Karpov, the challenger to his title, and was thus stripped of his championship by the International Chess Federation. Fischer was reportedly homeless for a time in the Los Angeles area, becoming involved with a fringe church. In 2004, he was arrested in Japan and held for several months for using a passport that the US government had revoked. He was eventually granted citizenship by Iceland and moved there in 2005.
Bobby Fischer died on January 17, 2008, in Reykjavík, Iceland, at the age of 64, due to kidney failure.
