Mikhail Vladimirovich Donskoy (russian: Михаил Владимирович Донской), (9 September 1948 – 13 January 2009) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus ( ...

. In 1970 he graduated from

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

and joined the

Institute of Control Sciences An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

of the

USSR Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

, where he became one of the lead developers of

Kaissa Kaissa (russian: Каисса) was a chess program developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It was named so after Caissa, the goddess of chess. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion in 1974 in Stockholm. History By 1967, a c ...

, a computer chess program that won the first

World Computer Chess Championship World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) is an event held periodically since 1974 where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association. It is often held in conjunction with ...

in 1974. After the dissolution of the Soviet computer chess initiative in the beginning of the 1980s he went into development of databases. In 1994 he established his own company, DISCo (Donskoy Interactive Software Company), which, among other projects, developed the Symbian interface for ABBYY Lingvo dictionaries.Inverview with Mikhail Donskoy
, 8 August 2008 (Russian).

References

Soviet computer scientists Computer chess people 2009 deaths 1948 births Soviet inventors 20th-century chess players {{Russia-chess-bio-stub