
Mathematicians who died under unfortunate or unfitting circumstances - GuiA
http://www.kellenmyers.org/deaths.html
======
stiff
Two whole schools of mathematics died in "unfortunate and unfitting
circumstances", namely the Lwów school and the Warsaw school:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lviv_professors](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lviv_professors)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-
Aktion_in_Poland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_Poland)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ruziewicz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ruziewicz)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82odzimierz_Sto%C5%BCek](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82odzimierz_Sto%C5%BCek)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Auerbach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Auerbach)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Kaczmarz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Kaczmarz)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_%C5%81omnicki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_%C5%81omnicki)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliusz_Schauder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliusz_Schauder)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Saks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Saks)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Mazurkiewicz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Mazurkiewicz)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Lindenbaum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Lindenbaum)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Dickstein_%28mathematici...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Dickstein_%28mathematician%29)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Chwistek](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Chwistek)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Marcinkiewicz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Marcinkiewicz)

Some members emigrated before or during the war and spread all over the world,
mostly in the US. After 1945 almost none of the original members were still
alive and in Poland/Ukraine.

~~~
ajuc
Many of L'viv (then Lwów) professors (for example Stefan Banach, of the
Banach-Tarski paradox fame) survived only because they were hired as "lice
feeders" in the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Weigl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Weigl)
institute, and he managed to persuade Germans that they need consistent data,
so they can't take his feeders away just because they are Jewish or Polish.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeder_of_lice#Lw.C3.B3w_academ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeder_of_lice#Lw.C3.B3w_academics_and_intellectuals_as_feeders)

------
ddlatham
Tycho Brahe

 _Tycho suddenly contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a
banquet in Prague, and died eleven days later, on 24 October 1601. According
to Kepler 's first hand account, Tycho had refused to leave the banquet to
relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death)

------
542458
"Turing committed suicide in 1954, by eating a cyanide-laced apple, although
the circumstances of his death were ambiguous enough (deliberately) so that
his mother could maintain, for her own sake, that it was an accident."

I feel that this is an unfair statement. There are lots of reasons to believe
Turning's death wasn't suicide.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death)

I also think that Fermat deserves an honourable mention for particularly poor
timing.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem)

~~~
cbd1984
Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and was
hardly inactive in that period. Had he even thought he actually had a proof,
he would have published it, and we would all know it was wrong.

A far more likely scenario is that he had a false proof, discovered he had a
false proof at some point after he made his marginal note, and didn't bother
to publish the fact he had made a fool of himself in some obscure marginalia.

The only mystery surrounding Fermat's understanding of his own "Last Theorem"
is precisely _which_ false proof he most likely had.

~~~
cperciva
_Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and
was hardly inactive in that period._

Indeed, just to clarify: The reason it is called his "Last" theorem is that it
was the last of his many claims to have been neither proven nor refuted;
nothing to do with when he made the claim.

------
Pfiffer
Grothendieck apparently died recently:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck#Retirem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck#Retirement_into_reclusion_and_death)

~~~
AlfaWolph
Unfortunately, we recently lost Ralph Faudree under terrible circumstances as
well.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Faudree](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Faudree)

~~~
indians_pro
The page doesn't even mention his death, save for wikipedia classifying the
page under '2015 deaths'.

------
anoopelias
Rajeev Motwani

Rajeev Motwani was a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
whose research focused on theoretical computer science. He was an early
advisor and supporter of companies including Google and PayPal, and a special
advisor to Sequoia Capital. He was a winner of the Gödel Prize in 2001.

Further,

Motwani was found dead in his pool in the backyard of his Atherton home on
June 5, 2009

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Motwani](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Motwani)

------
grifter
John von Neumann -- December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957 (cancer) -- was a
Hungarian and later American pure and applied mathematician, physicist,
inventor and polymath. He made major contributions to a number of fields,[2]
including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis,
ergodic theory, geometry, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum
mechanics, hydrodynamics, and fluid dynamics), economics (game theory),
computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, self-replicating
machines, stochastic computing), and statistics. [1]

"A von Neumann biographer, Norman Macrae, has speculated that the cancer was
caused by von Neumann's presence at the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests
held in 1946 at Bikini Atoll." [2]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Later_life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Later_life)

------
sendmarsh
No Hypatia? Skinned alive by Christian mob..

~~~
acheron
If you're actually interested in Hypatia you can read this series...

[http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/hypatia-part-i-mean-
stre...](http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/hypatia-part-i-mean-streets-of-
old.html)

~~~
sendmarsh
Thanks, having basically understood the "Cosmos" account of her life it was
good to read a detailed researched account.

------
nicklaf
Hermann Minkowski. Died suddenly of appendicitis at the age of 44.

"In the early years of his scientific career, Albert Einstein considered
mathematics to be a mere tool in the service of physical intuition. In later
years, he came to consider mathematics as the very source of scientific
creativity. A main motive behind this change was the influence of two
prominent German mathematicians: David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski." [1]

[1] [http://www-history.mcs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowsk...](http://www-history.mcs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html)

------
yodsanklai
Jacques Herbrand died at 23 in a mountain climbing accident.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Herbrand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Herbrand)

------
alimoeeny
Issac Newton is on this list, his death at 84 hardly qualifies as unfortunate
or unfitting. I mean, even today, 84 is well above life expectancy in most of
the world.

------
olalonde
On a related note, "Dangerous Knowledge" is a great documentary "about four of
the most brilliant mathematicians of all time, Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann,
Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, their genius, their tragic madness and their
ultimate suicides".
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520274/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520274/)

~~~
Xophmeister
Do Cantor or Gödel's deaths count as suicide? They weren't really self-
inflicted, but more due to mental illness.

Thanks for mentioning the documentary: I will check it out...

------
Zibulon
Just for the records, Grothendieck maybe "disappeared", but he also died a
couple of months ago, it was all over the press...

~~~
contingencies
Grothendieck was Satoshi!

------
kriro
I once had a couple of slides on Cantor->Turing->Gödel that finished of the
AI101 lecture I held. One could create a narrative that their particular work
lead to their unfortunate deaths and I'm pretty sure I actually read that
somewhere but think it is far fetched (particularly for Turing) and didn't
mention it.

------
ild
Yutaka Taniyama, suicide

------
tylerneylon
Felix Hausdorff committed suicide in 1942, after having put in quite some
effort to escape Nazi Germany.

------
myg204
Maurice Audin was a young Mathematician who died in 1957 in Algiers under
torture by the French Military because he supported the Algerian independence
cause.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Audin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Audin)

------
sk8ingdom
William Rowan Hamilton, credited as the inventor of quaternions, died of a
severe gout precipitated by excessive drinking and overeating.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton)

------
rotten
Archimedes! Run through by a sword by an impatient soldier while he was trying
to finish up a math problem instead of heeding a summons to some bureaucrat or
general or something.

~~~
amelius
I'm actually amazed that he reached the age of 75! I didn't know people could
become that old back in those days. Was he an exception?

~~~
Evgeny
I don't think so - there is a widespread confusion about life expectancy. If,
for example, child mortality was high compared to modern times, the life
expectancy at birth was low.

However, for those who survived childhood, the life expectancy would not be
very much different from modern.

Example: triplets were born, but one died at birth, another when he was 10,
and another lived to 80. So, life expectancy at birth is only 30 years, but
measured at five years of age it is 45 years, and measured at 20 years of age
it is full 80 years.

This short article gives some explanation.
[http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-
constant-2-...](http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-
constant-2-000-years.html)

~~~
maxerickson
75 would have been somewhat unusual in the US in 1900:

[http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_10.html#w...](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_10.html#wp1041324)

It shows the age 30 life expectancy, in 1900 it was 35 years, so 65 year old.
Compare to today which is 47 years (77 years old).

There are life tables for historical periods, but the modern data is likely
more reliable and still shows quite some difference.

Your link makes a good point about life expectancy at birth not being the
right measure, but there is a very real expansion in life expectancy that has
taken place. I guess infectious disease control probably pulled a lot of that
expansion into the last 100 years.

------
abruzzi
I think the photos of Archimedes and Isaac Newton are inaccurate. Edit: seems
to be a bug in iPad safari causing the wrong images to display...

------
thisandthat
Anyone else between 1950s and 2010s?

~~~
compbio
Gareth Williams (26 September 1978 – c. 16 August 2010) was a Welsh
mathematician and employee of GCHQ seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service
(SIS or MI6) who was found dead in suspicious circumstances at a Security
Service safe house flat in Pimlico, London, on 23 August 2010. His decomposing
naked remains were found in a red North Face bag, padlocked from the outside,
in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams)

Philip Taylor Kramer (July 12, 1952 – February 12, 1995) was a bass guitar
player for the rock group Iron Butterfly during the 1970s. After this he
obtained a night school degree in aerospace engineering, he worked on the MX
missile guidance system for a contractor of the US Department of Defense and
later in the computer industry on fractal compression, facial recognition
systems, and advanced communications. His disappearance on February 12, 1995
caused a mystery lasting for years.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Taylor_Kramer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Taylor_Kramer)

~~~
tedunangst
Kramer obviously disappeared into a wormhole as part of his research into
faster than light communications.

------
evrim
That Galois story is obviously a fairy tale. Probably the story is written by
his father who is the real one behind. Math history is full of those urban
legends because its better like this. A hero of his time.

