math and terror
Sergey Degaev
I forgot who gave me the link to this Russian LJ post, mostly based on the 2003 book The Degaev Affair
, but I must say, it is quite awesome. It’s about the russian mathematician Alexander Pell, who joined the newly established University of South Dakota in 1901, shortly after getting his degree from Johns Hopkins University, was adored by the students, became the first dean of the university’s College of Engineering in 1907, which he created. He discovered a gifted student Anna Johnson who he married in 1908 and went to Chicago with her, and he died in Bryn Mawr in 1921. The USD still has Dr. Alexander Pell scholarship for gifted math undergrads. To quote one of his students, “he was one of the most human men I have ever known”.
But guess who he was before moving to the USA? Born in 1857 as Sergey Degaev, he joined the Russian terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya and became its high-ranking member by 1880. In 1882 Narodnaya Volya successfully assassinated Czar Alexander II of Russia. After an arrest, Degaev betrayed his organization to the chief of okhrana (secret police) G.Sudeikin (father of Serge Sudeikin) for the promise of the second position in the new shadow government that Sudeikin was supposedly going to lead by means of controlled terror. Over 2000 members were eventually put on trial, but Degaev, seeing that Sudeikin was not fulfilling any promises, murdered him in the trend-setting ice-axe-to-the-head manner (see the murder of Leon Trotsky), and submitted himself to the mercy of the other terrorists in 1883, who spared his life, but banished him from Russia and from politics forever.
Isn’t America great?
Crossposted from LiveJournal