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Mathematics Goes to the Movies

by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross

 

Unabomber: The True Story (1996)

A biopic about Theodore Kaczynski (played by Tobin Bell), the Unabomber, who sent letter bombs to seemingly random businessmen academics over a period of seventeen years. The movie revolves around Ben Jeffries (Dean Stockwell), the postal inspector who pursued Kaczynski.

3:00
A bedraggled Kaczynski is captured by Jeffries and the FBI at his Montana cabin.

50:00
Linda Kaczynski (Victoria Mallory), Ted’s sister-in-law, refers to Ted’s having taught, and his having being educated at Harvard:
All that Harvard education wasted just because he doesn’t wanta comprise with the system.

1:04:00
Ted’s brother David (Robert Hays) is talking to Linda, quoting from Ted’s Manifesto:
You know Ted’s always complaining about being cheated out of his childhood? And this jumps out at me. “The system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It can’t function without them, so heavy pressure is put on children to excel in these fields.” He was reading Scientific American when the other kids were collecting Superman comics.

1:05:00 (and 1:22:00)
The equation for the centre of mass of a collection of objects appears on the blackboard behind the academic John Hauser (one of Kaczynski’s victims, not a mathematics lecturer), who is demonstrating it by the balancing of a broom.

DISCUSSION:
Theodore Kaczynski was a mathematician, trained at Harvard College, Harvard University and the University of Michigan. He worked at the University of California at Berkeley in the 60’s, before dropping out of society. From 1978 to1996, Kaczynski mailed a number of bombs to American scientists, killing three people. At the time, much was made of Kaczynski’s mathematical background, as is reflected in the title of the book Harvard and the Unabomber: the Education of an American Terrorist, by Alston Chase. It is striking how little is made of this in the movie, in which Kaczynski is made out to be an angry loner, but no explanation or motivation is offered in terms of Kaczynski’s previous solitary, mathematical past. No explicit mention is made of Kaczynski having been a mathematician (although the cover of the video box refers to him as a “brilliant mathematician”). It is surprising that a Hollywood movie passed up such an opportunity.