Bobby Fischer, orig. Robert James Fischer, (born March 9, 1943, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 17, 2008, Reykjavík, Ice.), U.S.-born chess master. He became a grandmaster at age 15, then a record. In 1972 Fischer defeated Boris Spassky to become the only American to win the world chess championship. An intense and eccentric personality, he was a devout Christian fundamentalist who frequently condemned the Soviet Union for godlessness; he was deprived of his title in 1975 after refusing to meet his Soviet challenger, Anatoly Karpov. He remained out of the game thereafter except for a victorious private rematch with Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992; the game violated U.S. sanctions against Yugoslavia. Fischer stayed abroad, becoming an Icelandic citizen in 2005.
