Georgy Adelson-Velsky

Co-inventor of the AVL tree and head developer of the Kaissa chess computer, Adelson-Velsky made foundational contributions to both computer science and computer chess. In 1962, Georgy and E.M. Landis published a paper "An algorithm for the organization of information," which became the AVL tree, named after its two inventors. In 1965, Adelson-Velsky headed the development of a computer chess program at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Moscow.

The program defeated Kotok-McCarthy in the first chess match between computer programs, and evolved into Kaissa, the first world computer chess champion.