By: John A. Yowan
Birth - 10 years Old
Regina Wender Fischer ( Bobby Fischer's Mother )
Robert James Fischer was born on March 9, 1943 in Chicago Illinois to Regina Wender Fischer Pustan (born in Switzerland of Jewish parents) and Hans-Gerhardt Fischer. His father was a German biophysicist from Berlin (Hans and Regina married on November 4, 1933 in Moscow) and his mother was a riveter in a defense plant at the time. She later became a grade school teacher, a registered nurse, a physician (she first entered medical school in the Moscow in 1933 but did not complete her medical degree), and completed a PhD in hematology. She could speak English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese fluently.
In 1945 Hans-Gerhardt Fischer left the Fischer family, divorced Regina, and moved to Santiago, Chile. He moved to Santiago, Chile. Hans never lived with Regina in the United States. Bobby Fischer never met his father. Regina had custody of Bobby and his older sister, Joan.
In 1948 they moved to Mobile, Arizona where Regina taught in an elementary school.
In 1949 they moved to Brooklyn, New York where Regina worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse at Prospect Heights Hospital in Brooklyn. Regina moved to Brooklyn (Apt Q, 560 Lincoln Place) to get her master's degree in nursing.
Bobby (age 6) and his sister (age 11) learned to play chess in May 1949 from instructions found in a chess set that Joan bought at a candy store below their apartment. Bobby saw his first chess book a month later. For over a year Bobby played chess by himself.
On November 14, 1950 his mother sent ad to the Brooklyn Eagle, looking for chess opponents for her son. The ad was never published because the editorial staff could not decide under what category to place it. The paper then forwarded the ad to Hermann Helms (1870-1963), their chess columnist from 1893 to 1955. He replied in January 1951, and suggested that Bobby go to a chess exhibition at the Grand Army Plaza Library and come by the Brooklyn Chess Club.