Pointless Notes: Murder and Complex Analysis

Theodore John Kaczynski, BA (Mathematics, Harvard University, 1962), PhD (University of Michigan, 1967), is famous for being a series bomber, but to mathematicians, he's also known as a complex analyst. Not a (mathematically) famous one, but a competent one at least, and some also said he was brilliant. In 1969, he resigned as an assistant professor at Berkeley.

There was a news article about his math, and it contained the usual kind of flailing about how research level math is too hard for layponies. No need to be so dramatic about it... 

I was amused by this:

Writing in the first person plural is common in mathematics, said Kenneth Ribet of UC Berkeley. So in hindsight, the Unabomber's manifesto may provide an obscure hint at its alleged author's former profession. 

The mathematician's habit of writing in the Royal We has been exposed!

The general theme of Kaczynski's mathematics is of course, complex analysis. I read one of his analysis papers and actually understood it, kinda.

Boundary Functions for Bounded Harmonic Functions (1969):

Let D be the open unit disk in the complex plane and let C be its boundary, the unit circle...

Stop. Let me rewrite it in my own language:

1. Let $D$ be the open unit disk in $\mathbb{C}$, and $\partial D$ be its boundary, which is the unit circle.
2. Consider any function $f: D\to \mathbb{C}$, and any point $z\in\partial D$. What is the limit of $f$ at $z$? There are many different curves along which to approach that point $z$, and none is better than the other. So we must consider all of them.
3. So, we say that $\phi: \partial D \to \mathbb{C}$ is a boundary function of $f$, if for any point $z\in\partial D$, there is some curve along which the limit of $f$ at $z$ is $g(z)$.
4. Now, in true "pointless analysis" fashion, we ask, if $f$ is "very nice", would $\phi$ also be "pretty nice"?
5. Kinda. If $f$ is continuous (very nice!), then $\phi$ is of Baire class 0 (continuous function) or of Baire class 1 (pointwise limit of continuous function), but after changing a countable number of points on it.

And that's where I take my leave. This analysis getting way too specialized for my own good!

The basic political philosophy of Kaczynski is summarized in the introduction of his Industrial Society and its Nature (1995):

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race... There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy... We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. 

And the bombing activities were used to create tension in the industrial system so that it would breakdown.

It's kind of amusing, after knowing his bombing activities, to see his name cited completely without social judgment, with perfect equanimity of a mathematician, in a math book.

The other mathematician we'll note today is André Bloch, a complex analyst and a murderer. Bloch was in a mental asylum for 31 years, during which he wrote all his math papers. The reason for the mental asylum was because

On 17 November 1917, while on convalescent leave from service in World War I, Bloch killed his brother Georges, and his aunt and uncle. Several conjectures about the motives for Bloch's crime exist among mathematicians...

His math works were also very specialized in complex analysis, and I've been fed up with it for today, so no more of that.

In a similar vein, I also note that suicide and thermodynamics are correlated:

States of Matter (1975), David Goodstein:

Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously.

Indeed, consider the casualties:

• Robert Mayer (jumping out of window), 
• Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (hanging), 
• American physical chemist Gilbert Lewis (cyanide)

About the only other scientist I know that suicided is Paul Ehrenfest, who worked mainly on atomic theory and relativity.