Born: 16 February 1906, Russia
Died: 26 June 1944
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
Vera Menchik astounded the chess world by defeating high-level male opponents in the 1920s and ’30s. In 1927, Menchik won the first Women’s World Chess Championship. Routinely winning women’s matches, she started playing in male tournaments, becoming the first woman to do so. She played in more than three dozen men’s tournaments, beating many top players; newspapers around the world covered her matches. She was killed in 1944, during a a Nazi air raid on London, when a bomb hit the home where she lived with her mother and sister. She was only 38.