Theodore John Kaczynski ( kə-ZIN-skee; May 22, 1942 – June 10, 2023), also known as the Unabomber ( YOO-nə-bom-ər), was an American mathematician and domestic terrorist. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a reclusive primitive lifestyle and lone wolf terrorism campaign. Kaczynski murdered 3 people and injured 23 others between 1978 and 1995 in a nationwide mail bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the natural environment. He authored a roughly 35,000-word manifesto and social critique, Industrial Society and Its Future (1995), which opposes all forms of technology, rejects leftism, advocates cultural primitivism, and ultimately suggests violent revolution. In 1971, Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills to become self-sufficient. After witnessing the destruction of the wilderness surrounding his cabin, he concluded that living in nature was becoming impossible and resolved to fight industrialization and its destruction of nature through terrorism. In 1979, Kaczynski became the subject of what was, by the time of his arrest in 1996, the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI used the case identifier UNABOM (University and Airline Bombing) before his identity was known, resulting in the media naming him the "Unabomber". In 1995, Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times promising to "desist from terrorism" if the Times or The Washington Post published his manifesto, in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary in attracting attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies. The FBI and U.S. attorney general Janet Reno pushed for the publication of the essay, which appeared in The Washington Post in September 1995. Upon reading it, Kaczynski's brother, David, recognized the prose style and reported his suspicions to the FBI. After his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski—maintaining that he was sane—tried and failed to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers because they wished him to plead insanity to avoid the death penalty. He pleaded guilty to all charges in 1998 and was sentenced to several consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2021, he received a cancer diagnosis and stopped treatment in March 2023. Kaczynski hanged himself in prison in June 2023.
Early life
Childhood Theodore John Kaczynski was born in Chicago on May 22, 1942, to working-class parents Wanda Theresa (née Dombek) and Theodore Richard Kaczynski, a sausage maker. The two were Polish Americans who were raised as Roman Catholics but later became atheists. They married on April 11, 1939. From first to fourth grade (ages six to nine), Kaczynski attended Sherman Elementary School in Chicago, where administrators described him as healthy and well-adjusted. In 1952, three years after his brother David was born, the family moved to suburban Evergreen Park, Illinois, and Ted transferred to Evergreen Park Central Junior High School. After testing scored his IQ at 167, he skipped the sixth grade. Kaczynski later described this as a pivotal event: previously he had socialized with his peers and was even seen as a leader, but after skipping ahead of them he felt he did not fit in with the older children, who bullied him. Neighbors in Evergreen Park later described the Kaczynski family as "civic-minded folks", one recalling the parents "sacrificed everything they had for their children". Both Ted and David were intelligent, but Ted was exceptionally bright. Neighbors described him as a smart but lonely individual.
High school
Kaczynski attended Evergreen Park Community High School, where he excelled academically. He played the trombone in the marching band and was a member of the mathematics, biology, coin, and German clubs. In 1996, a former classmate said: "He was never really seen as a person, as an individual personality ... He was always regarded as a walking brain, so to speak." During this period, Kaczynski became intensely interested in mathematics, spending hours studying and solving advanced problems. He became associated with a group of like-minded boys interested in science and mathematics, known as the "briefcase boys" due to their penchant for carrying briefcases. Throughout high school, Kaczynski was ahead of his classmates academically. Placed in a more advanced mathematics class, he soon mastered the material. He skipped the eleventh grade, and, by attending summer school, he graduated at age 15. Kaczynski was one of his school's five National Merit finalists and was encouraged to apply to Harvard University. While still age 15, he was accepted to Harvard and entered the university on a scholarship in 1958 at age 16. A high school classmate later said Kaczynski was emotionally unprepared: "They packed him up and sent him to Harvard before he was ready ... He didn't even have a driver's license."
Harvard University
Kaczynski matriculated at Harvard College as a mathematics prodigy. During his first year at the university, Kaczynski lived at 8 Prescott Street, which was intended to provide a small, intimate living space for the youngest, most precocious incoming students. For the following three years, he lived at Eliot House. His housemates and other students at Harvard described Kaczynski as a very intelligent but socially reserved person. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Harvard in 1962, finishing with a GPA of 3.12.
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