Ted Kaczynski

Theodore John Kaczynski (born May 22, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois), also known as the Unabomber, was convicted in connection with a series of carefully planned bombings via the U.S. mail and other means which took two lives and injured several others over a period of seventeen years before he was finally apprehended in 1996. He also wrote a lengthy essay entitled Industrial Society and its Consequences, the publication of which led to his capture.

Life

Showing signs of very high intelligence early in life, Kaczynski graduated early from high school and entered Harvard University in 1958 at age 16. Graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1962, he then went to the University of Michigan where to took a Masters and PhD.

Thereafter, he moved to California where he took up a position as assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California in Berkeley. However, he resigned from that post just two years later and took up the life of a semi-hermit, working odd jobs and part time to support himself.

Bombings

In the late 1970s, a series of carefully planned bombings, later attributed to Kaczynski, began. The bombings targeted mainly academics, but one was directed against an airline. Because of certain characteristics which appeared to link them together, and also because of their targets, the perpetrator was dubbed the Unabomber by the FBI, the name being derived from university and airlines bomber.

The bombings seemed to cease for a number of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but resumed again in 1993. At that time and subsequently, several letters were sent to newspapers and others taking credit for the bombings on behalf of a fictitious anarchist group and containing warnings and messages related thereto.

In one of these letters, from the year 1995, the writer offered to cease targeting individuals (but reserved the right to continue sabatoge against property) provided a lengthy essay which he had written be published and widely distributed. On September 19, 1995, after consultation with the FBI, this essay, under the title Industrial Society and its Consequences, was published in that day's edition of the Washington Post.