Mikhail Vladimirovich Donskoy , (9 September 1948 – 13 January 2009) was a Soviet and Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n computer scientist

Computer scientist

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

. In 1970 he graduated from Moscow State University

Moscow State University

Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...

 and joined the Institute of Control Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he became one of the lead developers of Kaissa

Kaissa

Kaissa was a chess program developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It was named so after the chess goddess Caissa. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion in 1974 in Stockholm.- History :...

, a computer chess program that won the first World Computer Chess Championship

World Computer Chess Championship

World Computer Chess Championship is an annual event where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association...

 in 1974.

After the dissolution of the Soviet computer chess initiative in the beginning of 1980s he went into development of databases. In 1994 he established his own company, DISCo (Donskoy Interactive Software Company), which, among other projects, developed the Symbian interface for ABBYY Lingvo dictionaries.