Google Doodle Honors Lyudmila Rudenko, First Woman to Win Chess International Master Title

Today’s Google Doodle honors Lyudmila Rudenko, a Ukraine-born woman who went on to become the second woman to win the Women’s World Chess Championship and the first woman to be awarded the International Master title in the World Chess Federation.

Before her success in chess, Lyudmila Rudenko was passionate about swimming. Her father introduced her to the sport at just 10 years old, and she ended up placing first in the 400-meter breaststroke at a local competition in Ukraine.

After swimming, she moved to Moscow to focus on chess and spent most of her career paving the way for women in the sport.

“We can never forget the struggle—the lack of opportunity, support, information, as well as having to withstand sexism and discrimination—that women had to endure in the male-dominated field of chess,” Susan Polgar, the chess Grandmaster, told Quartz.

Perhaps even more notable than her chess excellence, though: She organized an extensive evacuation of factory workers’ children during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, she considered that feat her life’s most important accomplishment.

Today would have been Rudenko’s 114th birthday.