Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian

Born June 17, 1929, in Tbilisi. Soviet chess player. Grandmaster of the USSR and International Grandmaster (1952); Honored Master of Sports (1960). Journalist and candidate of philosophical sciences (1968).

Petrosian held the USSR chess championship in 1959, 1961, and 1969. He was world champion from 1963 to 1966, after defeating M. M. Botvinnik, and from 1966 to 1969, after defeating B. V. Spassky. He was a member of the national team that placed first in chess olympiads from 1958 to 1974 and in European championship tournaments from 1957 to 1973. Petrosian became a member of the Presidium of the Chess Federation of the USSR in 1958 and editor of the weekly 64, a supplement to the newspaper Sovetskii sport, in 1968. His book Chess and Philosophy was published in Yerevan in 1968. Petrosian has been awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor and a number of medals.