Portrait of Mikhail Chigorin

Birthday profile

Mikhail Chigorin

Mikhail Chigorin, Russian chess player and theoretician (died 1908)

Born
November 12, 1850
Died
January 25, 1908
Zodiac sign
Scorpio
Birth year
1850

About Mikhail Chigorin

Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin was a Russian chess player. He played two World Championship matches against Wilhelm Steinitz, losing both times. The last great player of the Romantic chess style, he also served as a major source of inspiration for the "Soviet chess school", which dominated the chess world in the middle and latter parts of the 20th century. Chigorin had the slight advantage of choosing the openings in advance from a list supplied by Steinitz and duly won both games. His overall record against Steinitz was very close (+24−27=8).

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Mikhail Chigorin was born

Mikhail Chigorin was born in 1850. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1850

  • Best-selling bookThe Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineCompromise of 1850 on slavery
  • Technology milestoneFirst submarine telegraph cable (English Channel)
  • World population~1.3B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderZachary Taylor / Millard Fillmore
  • U.S. population23.2M

1850 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Mikhail Chigorin's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18502026
Population23.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Chessgames, 365Chess, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.