Chess Goddesses

Gisela K. Gresser

 

Gisela Kahn Gresser (1906 - 2000) was the first woman inducted into the U. S. Chess Hall of Fame. Born in 1906 in Detroit, Michigan, it is said she learned chess from a book. She was a spectator at the U.S. Women's Championship in 1938 but by 1940 she was playing in the championship. Mrs. Gresser, the first woman in the United States to achieve a master's rating (she was also awarded an International Woman Master title in 1950), was U.S. Women's Chess Champion nine (yes nine) times: 1944-46, 1948-51 (with Mona M. Karff), 1955-57 (with Nancy Roos), 1957-59 (with Sonja Graf Stevenson), 1962-64, 1965, 1966 (with Lisa Lane), 1967, and her final championship was won in 1969 at the age of 63. Mrs. Gresser represented the United States in several international events. She played in five Women's Candidates tournaments and three Women's Chess Olympiads. She was Women's World Chess Championship Challenger in 1949-50, and also won a U.S. Women's Open Championship in 1954.

Her "Inductee's Biography" from the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame website states that. Ms. Gresser was an important pioneer in womenÕs chess because she showed that women could become strong players in formal, high-level competition. Before her time, some women gained brief flashes of fame in U.S. chess, but always in an unofficial sort of way. Ladies were prominent in chess only as sometime solvers and composers of problems. Many felt that women could not stand the rigors of a serious event, even when they were highly skilled in friendly games. ÉHer repeated successes in a variety of national and international events did much to establish the respectability and viability of organized chess for women players.

Information on Mrs. Gresser was obtained from: http://www.excaliburelectronics.com/bio_gresser.html and http://www.webcom.com/lawson/chess/hof/gresshof.html.

See also a compendium of Gresser links from Chesslinks

An Update: Mrs. Gresser passed away on December 4, 2000 at the age of 94. Here is her obituary from The New York Times:

December 11, 2000 Gisela Kahn Gresser, Champion Chess Player, Dies at 94 By EUN LEE KOH Gisela Kahn Gresser, a pioneer in women's chess and a nine-time national champion, died Dec. 4 in her Manhattan home. She was 94. Mrs. Gresser, who was born in 1906 in Detroit, taught herself to play chess using a book a fellow passenger gave her on a cruise in 1939. She was at the forefront of women's chess in the United States for more than three decades. She and a handful of other women, including Sonja Graf Stevenson, Mary Bain and Mona May Karff, dominated tournament competition from the 1940's to the 1970's.

Mrs. Gresser entered her first chess competition in 1940. In 1944, she won her first United States Women's Chess Championship. She went on to win the championship eight more times, and became the first woman in the United States to earn a master's rating. In 1950, she was also awarded an international woman master title. Throughout her career, Mrs. Gresser represented the United States in several international events. She played in five Women's Candidates tournaments and three Women's Chess Olympiads. She was also Women's World Chess Championship challenger in 1949 and 1950. She retired from professional chess at 82. In 1992 she became the first woman inducted into the United States Chess Hall of Fame.

Mrs. Gresser studied classics as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College and won a fellowship for classical studies at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. In 1927 she married William Gresser, a New York City lawyer and musicologist. He died in 1992. She is survived by two sons, Ion and Julian, and a brother, Julius Kahn Jr.

Here is another obituary from Chess Life, March, 2001, page 40:

Gisela Kahn Gresser, the first woman in the United States to gain a master title, died in New York City in December. She was 94. She was also the first American woman to be inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame. Mrs. Gresser was born in Detroit and learned the game as a child. Her chess career reached back to the 1930s, when she began to play seriously, by then already in her 30s. In 1938 she attended the first U.S. Championship in New York. By 1944, Gresser won her first United States Women's Chess Championship, and she would win that title eight more times. Among her contemporaries in chess were Sonja Graf Stevenson, Mary Bain, and Mona May Karff. Karff and Gresser each became international masters in 1950.

A woman of many talents and interests, Mrs. Gresser was also an accomplished painter and musician, as well as a classical scholar. International chess events took her to Russia, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia; she played in five Womens candidates tournaments and three Womens Chess Olympiads. She went on safari many times, even in her 80s! American Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier was chess tutor to Mrs. Gresser for 30 years. He describes her as a student of her own notebooks. She took down everything he said, especially in the openings, and studied it. Her excellent mind and her competitive spirit served her well in competition. She is survived by two sons, Ion and Julian, and a brother, Julius Kahn Jr.