Ted Kaczynski

Theodore John Kaczynski was born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to working-class Polish-American parents. A mathematical prodigy with an IQ of 167, he skipped two grades and entered Harvard University at just 16 years old on a scholarship ^[1]. At Harvard, however, Kaczynski became increasingly isolated. He was also subjected to psychologically damaging experiments conducted by professor Henry Murray as part of a CIA-funded study, which some experts believe contributed to his later radicalization ^[2].

After earning his PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan, Kaczynski became the youngest professor ever hired by the University of California, Berkeley, at age 25. He abruptly resigned in 1969 and eventually retreated to a primitive 10-by-12-foot cabin near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived without electricity or running water ^[3].

From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski waged a solitary bombing campaign targeting universities and airlines — earning the FBI codename UNABOM. His 16 bombs killed three people and injured 23 others. In 1995, he demanded that The Washington Post and The New York Times publish his 35,000-word manifesto, "Industrial Society and Its Future," a screed arguing that modern technology was destroying human freedom ^[4].

The manifesto proved to be his undoing. His brother David recognized the writing style and alerted the FBI, leading to Kaczynski's arrest on April 3, 1996. He pleaded guilty in January 1998 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by a federal psychiatrist, Kaczynski nevertheless rejected any characterization of mental illness ^[5]. He was found dead in his cell at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, on June 10, 2023. An autopsy revealed he had late-stage rectal cancer and died by suicide ^[6].