Herbert Avram (24 January 1913 – 15 January 2006) was an American
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
player, and a
Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant commander (also hyphenated lieutenant-commander and abbreviated Lt Cdr, LtCdr. or LCDR) is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander. The corresponding rank i ...
in the
U.S. Navy. He was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
During and after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, he worked at the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
and the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
. The sensitive nature of his intelligence work meant that he could never be alone with Soviet chess players in chess tournaments or at chess clubs. However, this rarely, if ever, posed a problem.
Avram won the Virginia State Championship three consecutive times from 1952 to 1954. He won the Maryland Open – and thus became Maryland State Champion – twice, in 1955 and 24 years later in 1979.
He was one of the very small fraternity of players to take a point from
Bobby Fischer
Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11â ...
in a rated game, defeating the 14-year-old Brooklyn prodigy in a 1957 New Jersey tournament. Fischer was the reigning U.S. Junior champion having won
"The Game of the Century" shortly before this game was played.
As a player, Avram was noted for his materialism and his dogged defense, although he was also quite capable of launching sparkling attacks on the king. His chess activity tended to be marked by intervals of great activity followed by periods away from the game. The demands of his intelligence work, family life or both may have played a role in this cycle.
He also worked in the court reporting (stenography) market. He founded a company in this industry, and his efforts in this field led to the application of Closed Captioning on television.
Herbert Avram died in January 2006 at age 92. His wife of 64 years, computer programmer
Henriette, succumbed to cancer three months later.
References
External links
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