Paula Kalmar-Wolf

Paula Kalmar-Wolf only learned to play chess in her early thirties, but that did not prevent her from becoming one of the strongest female chess players in the 1920s and early 1930s—first in Vienna, then Austria, and finally the world. She numbered Richard Réti and her second husband Heinrich Wolf among her teachers. Kalmar-Wolf scored well in Women’s World Chess Championships, finishing third in 1927 and second in 1930 and 1931. The British Chess Magazine, reporting on the 1930 event stated she was leading for much of the tournament before the illness (diabetes) which was to take her life the following year, brought her down.