Hermanis Matisons

Hermanis Matisons (1894 – 1932), (also known as Herman Mattison), was a Latvian chess player and one of world's most highly regarded chess masters in the early 1930s. He was also a leading endgame composer. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.

In 1924, Matisons won the first Latvian chess championship tournament. Later that year he finished ahead of Euwe and Colle to win the first world amateur tournament, which was organized in conjunction with the Paris Olympic Games. Matisons played first board for Latvia at the 1931 Chess Olympiad in Prague and defeated Rubinstein and Alekhine, who was the world chess champion at that time.

Sixty of Matisons' studies were collected in the 1987 book Mattison's Chess Endgame Studies by T.G. Whitworth.