Lipnitsky

Isaak Oskarovich Lipnitsky was born in 1923 in Kiev; passionate about chess as a child, he played in the Ukrainian Championship at age 16 and was a rival of David Bronstein who would go on to become Challenger in 1951.  With Operation Barbarossa initiating the Great Patriotic War, Lipnitsky attended military academy, graduating as Lieutenant in the Red Army with counterespionage duties. He fought in the Battle of Stalingrad and all the way though to Berlin; his service record can be found at the Museum of the Great Patriotic War.

After the war he resumed his chess career, winning the 1949 Ukrainian Championship and thus became a Master. The following year he was in a three-way tie for second in the Soviet Championship. In 1956 he once again won the Ukrainian Championship in Kiev, scoring an outstanding +11=8, and authored Вопросы современной шахматной теории—Questions of Modern Chess Theory. It is for this publication he is remembered: reprinted fifty years later in the original Russian and a year after that in English, it is now considered a classic of chess literature.