Lyudmila Rudenko

Lyudmila Rudenko, born in 1904, was a Soviet chess player who became the second Women's World Chess Champion in 1950 and held the title until 1953. She was born in Lubny, in what is now Ukraine, learned the game from her father at the age of ten, and for years cared more about swimming, becoming breaststroke champion of Odessa and vice-champion of Ukraine in 1925. After moving to Moscow in 1925 she turned to tournament chess, won the Moscow women's championship in 1928 and took three Leningrad women's titles. In the winter of 1949 to 1950 FIDE held a sixteen-player tournament in Moscow to fill the vacancy left by Vera Menchik's death, and Rudenko, then 45, won it a full point clear. She lost the title to Elisaveta Bykova in 1953. FIDE made her an International Master in 1950, the first woman to receive that title, and a Woman Grandmaster in 1976, and she entered the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2015.