Alla Kushnir

Alla Shulimovna Kushnir (later, Kushnir-Stein) (; ; 11 August 1941 – 2 August 2013) was a Soviet-born Israeli chess player and professor of classics, numismatics, and archaeology. She was awarded the FIDE titles of Woman International Master (WIM) in 1962 and Woman Grandmaster (WGM) in 1976. In 2017, she was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame.

Biography Alla Kushnir immigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel in 1974. She married a Bank Leumi executive Marcel Stein in 1978. and in 1976 she won it as a player in the Israeli team, showing the best result at the 1st board.

She ended 5th USSR Women's Champion in Lipetsk (1959), 3rd-4th with Volpert USSR Women's Champion in Baku (1961), 2nd-3rd with Volpert USSR Women's Champion in Riga (1962), 3rd-4th with Koslovskaya USSR Women's Champion in Baku (1963) (then in the match playoff Kushnir beat Koslovskaya: 4–2), tied 1st place with Ranniku USSR Women's Champion in Beltsy (1970). Kushnir in the match playoff to beat - Ranniku at Moscow (February 1971).

One of her common opponents, Nona Gaprindashvili, described Kushnir as being an especially difficult opponent.

Academic career Alla Kushnir-Stein was a faculty member of the Department of Classics at Tel Aviv University and was Israel's scientific advisor to the Numismatic Society. She became an editor of Israel Numismatic Research. In 2013, she became the first Israeli and first woman to receive the Israel Museum’s Ya'akov Meshorer Numismatic Prize. She was a main contributor to the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae.