Elisaveta Bykova

Elisaveta Bykova, born in 1913, was a Soviet chess player who held the Women's World Chess Championship twice, from 1953 until 1956 and again from 1958 to 1962. She came from a peasant family, moved to Moscow at twelve and learned the game from her brother. She won the Moscow women's championship in 1938 and the Soviet women's championship in 1946, 1947 and 1950. After winning the Women's Candidates Tournament in Moscow in 1952, she beat the reigning champion Lyudmila Rudenko in Leningrad in 1953, lost the title to Olga Rubtsova in 1956 and became the first woman to win it back two years later. Nona Gaprindashvili, aged 21, took it from her in 1962. Away from the board she worked as an engineer at a large Moscow printing house and wrote three books, about Vera Menchik, Soviet women players and the Women's World Championship. She entered the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2013.