David Ionovich Bronstein was born on Feb 19, 1924 in Bila Tserkva (near Kiev), Ukraine. His family later moved to Kiev. Bronstein may have been a second cousin to Leon Trotsky (whose real name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein). He learned chess at the age of 6 from his grandfather and joined the Kiev Palace of Young Pioneers to play chess. He was trained by International Master Alexander Konstantinopolsky (1910-1990). Konstantinopolsky was Kiev champion from 1932 to 1936. In 1937, David Bronstein's father, Iohonon Baruch Bronstein, went to prison and served 7 years in the Gulag. He was accused as being a dissident because he particpated in a protest at his factory. He was released in 1944 under condition that he never visit Moscow or Kiev. In 1940, he took 2nd in the Ukraine Championship (won by Isaac Boleslavsky) and became a Russian Master at the age of 16. In the summer of 1941, he competed in the USSR championship qualifier at Rostov-on-Don. The tournament had to be abandoned when German panzers rolled across the steppes. In 1941, he was ordered to leave Kiev as a conscript in the Red Army. He avoided combat duty due to his poor eyesight (myopia). He married Olga Mikhailova Ignatieva (1920- ), a Soviet woman International Master (1952) and later awarded the title of Woman Grandmaster. In 1944, he defeated Mikhail Botvinnik in the 13th USSR championship. Botvinnik won the event. In 1945, he finished 3rd in the 14th USSR Championship. Botvinnik won the event. In 1948, he tied for 1st, with Alexander Kotov, in the 16th USSR Championship, held in Moscow. Because of his results, Bronstein was automatically seeded into the 1948 Saltzjobaden Interzonal. During the final round at the 1948 Saltsjobaden Interzonal, a Lithuanian man attacked Bronstein with a knife, shouting that his father had been sent to Siberia and wanted to kill all Russians. On August 15, 1948, he won the Saltsjobaden Interzonal (the first Interzonal) in Sweden with the score of 13.5-5.5, and qualified for the Candidates Tournament in Budapest. First place for the Interzonal was $550. The top 9 players in the Interzonal advanced to the 1950 Candidates Tournament. In 1949, he tied for 1st, with Vasily Smyslov, in the 17th USSR Championship, held in Moscow. In 1949, FIDE recognized Bronstein, age 26, as the youngest Grand Master. FIDE recognized 17 Grand Masters that year. On May 18, 1950, Bronstein tied for first with Boleslavsky at the Candidates tournament in Budapest. They shared $5,000 1st prize money and had to play a match to determine who would go on to challenge Botvinnik for the World Championship in 1951. On August 28, 1950, Bronstein defeated Boleslavsky in the Candidates Tournament play-off, held in Moscow. Bronstein won with the score of 7.5-6.5. In 1950, he was awarded the International Grandmaster title. On May 11, 1951, he drew with Mikhail Botvinnik in the world championship match (first World Championship match under FIDE rules) with a 12-12 score, held in Moscow. Bronstein's father was forbidden to enter Moscow, but he managed to watch some games incognito. Bronstein's second was Isaac Boleslavsky. There were 5 wins, 5 losses, and 14 draws in the match. In October, 1953, he tied for 2nd (along with Reshevsky and Keres) in the 1953 Candidates Tournament in Neuhausen-Zurich, behind Vasily Smyslov. In 1953/1954, he tied for 1st place, with Conel Alexander, at Hastings. In 1954, he wrote "Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953," considered one of the greatest chess books ever written. He was assisted by Boris Vainstein, President of the Soviet Chess Federation and a Colonel in the KGB. There are 210 games in this book. In September, 1955, he won the Goteborg (Gothenburg) Interzonal with an unbeaten score of 10 wins and 10 draws. In 1958, he did not qualify in the Portoroz Interzonal, held in Slovenia. He lost in the final round to Filipino Rudolfo Cardoso, who took 19th place out of 21 players. It was Bronstein's only loss. Bronstein tied for 7th-11th place. Only the top 6 places advanced to the Candidates Tournament. Bronstein's ending against Boris Spassky in the 1960 USSR Championship, held in Leningrad, was used in the opening sequence of the James Bond film, From Russia With Love, filmed in 1963. In 1961, he was awarded the title of International Judge in Chess Competition. In 1964, he took 6th in the Amsterdam Interzonal. Normally, this would have been good enough to advance to the Candidates matches, but only 3 of the 5 Soviet players were allowed to be seeded into the Candidates tournament. So Smylov, Spassky, and Tal advanced (they all tied for 1st, along with Larsen), but Bronstein and Stein (who took 5th place) did not. In 1975, Bronstein used the computer KAISSA to analyze an adjourned endgame that he was playing in Vilnius. When he adjourned the game, he telephoned the KAISSA programmers in Moscow to ask them to look up their program's library and find the best possible continuation for him. He played according to the program's library and won. Bronstein said that the solution was so beautiful, that he would have never thought of it himself. In 1976, he refused to sign a letter condemning the defection of Viktor Korchnoi to Holland. Bronstein was no longer allowed to leave the Soviet Union. In 1977, Bronstein married Boleslavsky's daughter, Tatiana, a Minsk academic. In 1989, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Bronstein was allowed to travel abroad. In 1990, he lost a computer match, held in the Netherlands, with HITECH. In 1991, he wrote 200 Open Games. In 1995, he co-wrote, with Belgiun journalist Tom Furstenburg, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." It contains 222 games played by Bronstein from 1938 to 1995, 57 years. In 1996, he wrote "The Modern Chess Self Tutor." On December 5, 2006, he died of a stroke in Minsk, Belarus at the age of 82. Bronstein won the Moscow championship 6 times. Bronstein represented the USSR in the chess Olympiads of 1952, 1954, 1956, and 1958, winning board prizes at each of them. He won 4 Olympiad team gold medals. Bronstein had a regular chess column in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia for many years.