Aron Nimzowitsch was born in Riga, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1886. He came to prominence in the chess world just before the First World War. He finished joint second with Rudolf Spielmann, half a point behind Akiba Rubinstein, at San Sebastian (1912). He was Russian Champion in 1913 (jointly with Alexander Alekhine) at St. Petersburg. Like Alekhine and others, he fled Russia after the 1917 Russian revolution. He initially moved to Berlin. In 1922, he finally settled in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Nimzowitsch won a string of international events in the mid-1920s which led him to challenge Jose Raul Capablanca to a world championship match in 1925, but negotiations dissolved after monetary backing could not be found. He took first place at Copenhagen (1923), Dresden (1926), Karlsbad (1929) and Frankfurt (1930).

Nimzowitsch's chess theories flew in the face of convention. He had a lengthy and bitter conflict with Siegbert Tarrasch over which ideas constituted proper chess play. While Tarrasch refined the classical approach of Wilhelm Steinitz, that the center had to be controlled and occupied by pawns, Nimzowitsch shattered these dogmatic assumptions, and proposed the controlling of the center with pieces from afar. In this way, the opponent is invited to occupy the center with pawns which thus become the targets of attack. This idea became known as the hypermodern school of chess thought.

Nimzowitsch, along with other hypermodern thinkers such as Richard Reti, revolutionized chess with their argument that controlling the center of the board matters more than actually occupying it. Nimzowitsch is also a highly-regarded chess writer, most famously for his controversial 1925 book My System, which is considered a classic by some prominent modern players but derided by others. Other books include Chess Praxis, which further expounds the hypermodern idea, and the seminal work The Blockade (Die Blockade in German), which explores the strategy implied by his famous maxim, "First restrain, then blockade, finally destroy!"

As a profound opening theoretician, Nimzowitsch has left a legacy of variations, many of which are still popular today. The Nimzo-Indian Defense (1.d4 ♘f6 2.c4 e6 3.♘c3 ♗b4) is one of the best-respected defenses to 1.d4, to such an extent that most players avoid it with 3.Nf3 or 3.g3. He played a key role in the development of two important lines in the French Defense: the Winawer Variation (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.♘c3 ♗b4) and the Advance Variation (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5). His name is also attached to the Sicilian, Nimzovich-Rubinstein (B29) Variation (1.e4 c5 2.♘f3 ♘f6), the Nimzowitsch-Larsen Attack (1.♘f3 followed by 2.b3), the Nimzowitsch Defense (1.e4 ♘c6), and the Nimzo-English (1.c4 ♘f6 2.♘c3 e6 3.♘f3 ♗b4).

He suddenly took ill at the end of 1934, and died of pneumonia three months later on March 16, 1935 in Copenhagen.

Wikipedia article: Aron Nimzowitsch