Aaron Nimzowitsch was born on 7 November 1886 in Riga, Latvia, which was then part of the Russian Empire. At his peak in the late 1920s, Nimzowitsch was one of the world's best players, but he is more famous as a theoretician and author.
In his influential books My System, published in several instalments between 1925 and 1927, and Chess Praxis, published in 1929, he developed central ideas of hypermodern chess, popularising the idea of controlling the centre with pieces and laying the foundations for new developments in opening theory. The still very popular Nimzowitsch-Indian Defence (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4) is named after him.
In 1917 he left Latvia and moved to Berlin, but in 1922 he moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he died on 16 March 1935.
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