Nicolas Rossolimo

Nicolas Rossolimo
Full name	Nikolai Spiridonovich Rossolimo
Country	Russian Empire Ukraine Greece France United States
Born	February 28, 1910 Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Died	July 24, 1975 (aged 65) New York, U.S.
Title	International Master (1950) Grandmaster (1953)

Nicolas Rossolimo (Russian: Николай Спиридонович Россоли́мо; February 28, 1910, Kiev – July 24, 1975, New York) was an American-French-Greek-Russian chess Grandmaster. After acquiring Greek citizenship in 1929, he was able to emigrate that year to France, and was many times chess champion of Paris. In 1952 he emigrated to the United States, and won the 1955 U.S. Open Chess Championship. He was a resident of New York City until his death.

The Rossolimo Variation of the Sicilian Defence bears his name.

Nikolai Spiridonovich Rossolimo (Russian: Николай Спиридонович Россолимо) was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Russian Empire, to Spiridon Rossolimo, a Russian painter and portraitist of Greek ancestry, and his wife née Xenia Nikolaevna Skugarevskaya, an writer and war correspondent. He was a nephew of the famous Russian neurologist and psychiatrist Grigory Ivanovich Rossolimo. He lived in Moscow during the mid-1920s, and moved to Paris with his Russian mother in 1929.

Having finished second behind former World Champion José Raúl Capablanca in a tournament in Paris in 1938, he won the French Championship in 1948. He was Paris Champion a record seven times, and drew two matches in 1948 and 1949 with Savielly Tartakower. In 1955 he won the U.S. Open Championship held in Long Beach, California, on tiebreaks ahead of Samuel Reshevsky. The prize was a new Buick automobile.

Rossolimo played for France in the Chess Olympiads of 1950 and 1972, and for the United States in 1958, 1960, and 1966. He was awarded the International Master title in 1950 and the International Grandmaster title in 1953.

...
Wikipedia