Persons says the room was N-43, which had "historically had been the maid's quarters." These seven person single rooms, one of which was occupied by Kaczynski, were selected by the students because they had lower boarding fees.

Burns says Kaczynski's self-imposed alienation was not atypical of the Class of 1962.

"It was about the first year that Harvard increased its enrollment" to include more students from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds.

"Many of us were not culturally prepared for Harvard. We suffered a lot," Burns says. "The suicide rate [for our class] went right through the ceiling."

Another Eliot House classmate recalls that Kaczynski frequently seemed unhappy. "I don't think I ever saw him smile," says Frederick L. Boersma '62. "He was practically stony-faced all the time."

Boersma says his life and Kaczynski's followed "parallel paths" after their graduation from Harvard.

"We both left Cambridge and came to Ann Arbor to get our advanced degrees," Boersma says.

But in light of the similarities, Boersma says he finds it strange that he never got to know Kaczynski on a personal basis.

Other classmates recall that Kaczynski had a somewhat tenuous association with a loose group of fellow mathematics and philosophy enthusiasts.

David Fowler '62 teaches mathematics and technology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and was a Lowell House resident when he was briefly acquainted with Kaczynski. Fowler recalls having taken a class on Algebraic Topology with Kaczynski.

Living Habits

Long before holing himself up in the Montana cabin, suitemates say Kaczynski lived in isolated and squalid conditions in Eliot.

Patrick S. McIntosh '62, who is now retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Lab and is continuing to do solar physics research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says he was among those best acquainted with Kaczynski.

"We all occasionally got a little annoyed at him," McIntosh says. "I think he played a trumpet once in a while. He also had a habit of rocking back and forth in his Harvard chair, and he would bump against the wall and hard on the floor. I even think House Master [John H.] Finley, Jr. [who lived directly below Kaczynski] even got on him about it once."

McIntosh also attests to Kaczynski's anti-social habits. "I have a faint memory of trying to get to know him by sitting down with him at dinner. He would smile kind of furtively, then linger for a moment or two and excuse himself and leave," McIntosh says.