Wilhelm Steinitz (May 17, 1836 – August 12, 1900) was an Austrian-American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. Steinitz unveiled in 1873 a new positional style of play and demonstrated that it was superior to the old style. His new style was controversial and some even branded it as "cowardly", but many of Steinitz's games showed that it could also provide a platform for attacks as ferocious as those of the old school. By the early 1890s, Steinitz' approach was widely accepted and the next generation of top players acknowledged their debt to him, most notably his successor as world champion, Emanuel Lasker. Source: Wilhelm Steinitz's Chess Biography on Wikipedia.