Viswanathan Anand is a chess Grandmaster and World Chess Champion from India. He was the FIDE World Chess Champion from the year 2000 to 2002 and became the World Champion in 2007. He won Vladimir Kramnik in 2008 and won Veselin Topalov to defend his World Chess Championship in 2010. He was born on 11th December 1969 in Chennai in Tamil Nadu in a Tamil family. He was brought up in Chennai. His parents are Viswanathan Iyer and Susheela. He has one elder brother Shivakumar and one elder sister Anuradha. His brother is working at Crompton Greaves and sister is a lecturer at the University of Michigan. He studied at Don Bosco Matriculation Higher Secondary School at Egmore in Chennai and graduated in commerce at Loyola College, Chennai. 

He broke the 2800 mark on the FIDE rating list and he is one of the six players to break this. He was made the world number one for the first time in April 2007 at his age of 37. He ranked world number one from April 2007 to July 2008 continuously for fifteen months. In October 2008, he lost the top three ranking for the first time since July 1996. Again he became world number one on 1st November 2010 when he defeated the number one player Magnus Carlsen in the Bilbao Masters. It was in 1987 that he became the India’s first grandmaster. He received Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award for his contributions to sports. In 2007 he was awarded Padma Vibhushan and he is the first sportsman to receive this honor in the history of India. He received Arjuna Award in 1985, Padma Shri in 1987 and Padma Bhushan in 2000. He is also known as the Tiger of Madras. The Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh invited him to attend the dinner hosted for US President Barack Obama on 7th November 2010 and he is the only one sports person invited.