Ted Kaczynski: A Gifted Mathematician Turned Into A Domestic Terrorist

The Unabomber is a nickname that is given to Ted Kaczynski who conducted a series of attacks for 17 years with mail bombs to target business executives, academics, and more. He started his bombing campaign since the late 1970s that involved 3 deaths and 23 injuries. The FBI finally ended his 17-year terror campaign in 1996 and caught Kaczynski. It was the longest as well as the most expensive manhunt ever conducted by the FBI. There is an interesting fact you might not know about the man is that he was a mathematical prodigy, had an IQ of over 160, and wrote with incredible clarity.

Ted Kaczynski’s Early Life

Theodore J. Kaczynski was born in 1942 in Chicago to a working-class family. He had a younger brother David who was later involved in his elder brother’s arrest.

People that attended the same school with Ted said that he was a loner who had an excellent academic record. At the age of 16, he was accepted at Harvard University after graduating early from Evergreen Park Community High School (Ted skipped the 11th grade). While studying at the top university, he didn’t really make a lot of friends. However, he still kept his academic record at an outstanding level.

In 1962, he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor degree in maths. Later, he earned a master degree and a doctorate in maths from the University of Michigan 1964 and 1967, respectively. In 1967, Ted won the award for Michigan’s best math dissertation of the year. “I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 men in the country understood or appreciated it”, said a member of his dissertation committee Maxwell Reade. In addition, his doctoral advisor Allen Shields even called it “the best I have ever direct”.

After finish his education, Kaczynski went to the University of California at Berkeley and became the youngest assistant professor in UC Berkeley history. Despite being a gifted mathematician, he said that maths was not important to him and it was only a game he was good at. Two years later, he unexpectedly resigned without giving any reason in 1969.

“Ever since my early teens I had dreamed of escaping from civilization,” Kaczynski said in an interview. After leaving the job, he lived in a self-made cabin without indoor plumbing or electricity in the woods located near Lincoln, Montana. In 1978, he started sending parcel bombs to businessmen, scientists, and other people whose work enraged him.

He was called “Unabomber” by law enforcement because at the early stage, he only targeted airlines and universities. He conducted in a total of sixteen bomb attacks which resulted in three deaths and 23 injuries.

Ted Kaczynski’s 17-year terror bombing campaign

The bombing began in 1978 when a security officer at Northwestern University was injured when a package exploded. One year later, he sent another bomb to the same university, resulting in a graduate student injury. In the same year, he snuck a bomb into an American Airlines flight and the bomb went off mid-flight which caused 12 passengers with smoke inhalation and an emergency landing. In 1985, he decided to switch things up, sending a bomb loaded with shrapnel to a computer store in California which killed the owner. The other two victims were Gilbert Murray and Thomas Mosser. Murray worked as a timber industry lobbyist and he was murdered in Sacramento. Mosser, who worked as an advertising executive, was killed in his own home in New Jersey.

In 1993, he started writing to some newspapers and taunted his victims as well as threaten new targets. Kaczynski also began writing to newspapers, taunting his victims, and threatening new targets. He always referred himself on those articles as either "FC" (Freedom Club) or "we". However, there is no evidence of him working with other people.

In 1995, Kaczynski sent some letters to media outlets demanding that his essay “Industrial Society and Its Future” must be published in full by a major newspaper and he would stop the bombing. On 19 September 1995, the essay was published by The Washington Post and The New York Times.

The "Industrial Society and Its Future" starts with “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race”. He writes that technology has had a destabilizing effect on society, has made life unfulfilling, and has caused widespread psychological suffering.

On April 3, 1996, the FBI arrested Ted in the doorway of his cabin. Kaczynski, now 75, is serving his life sentence in a “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado. In prison, he has still kept producing books and essays. One of his books, Technological Slavery, was published in 2010 which is mostly rated 5 stars on Amazon. In the report for the 50th reunion of Kaczynski’s class at Harvard, he listed “prisoner” to be his occupation and “life sentences” to be his awards. If you would want to know more about Ted Kaczynski and especially his bombing campaign, you can check out the "Manhunt" TV series by Netflix about the FBI's hunt for the Unabomber.