World War II provides numerous examples of people whose legacy of impressive mathematical achievements is tainted by less savory aspects of their personalities and careers. I have written a little about this before, in the context of the destruction of the mathematics department at Goettingen by the Nazis. This was arguably the world's greatest department, and the development of US research centers like Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and NYU, was greatly aided by the exodus preceding and following the Nazi purges. I thought I would spend a little more time on the most egregious representative of Nazi mathematics: Ludwig Bieberbach.

First, the mathematician. Before the war, he was one of the most important mathematicians in Germany. Today, he is mostly remembered for his famous conjecture in complex analysis. Formulated in 1915, the Bieberbach conjecture motivated much of the research in complex analysis throughout the 20th century. Several key figures in mathematics of their time such as Loewner, Littlewood, Nevanlinna, Garabedian, made serious attempts at resolving the conjecture, and along the way developed beautiful mathematics that would have ramifications far beyond the original question. Fairly early in my mathematical education, I was interested in geometric function theory, an area which largely grew out of research on the Bieberbach conjecture, and I did not learn about Bieberbach's involvement with the Nazis until much later.

The conjecture remained open for nearly seventy years until the (somewhat eccentric) Louis de Branges de Bourcia, a professor at Purdue University, claimed to have found a proof in 1984. De Branges had previously produced "proofs" that were later found to contain mistakes, so experts in the West were reluctant to accept his claim at first, especially since his original manuscript was 400 pages long! De Branges packed his suitcase, and took his proof to the Steklov Institute in Leningrad, where he and a team of Soviet mathematicians reduced the proof to a manageable length of about 30-40 pages. In a way, the proof of the Bieberbach conjecture, which is now more properly called de Branges' Theorem, was also a swan's song for a (certain flavor of) classical complex analysis, a discipline which had dominated 19th and early 20th century mathematics, but gradually declined as a research area as the 20th century progressed.

Next, Bieberbach the Nazi. Although he appears to not have always been an antisemite (O'Connor and Robertson cite a story according to which Bieberbach expressed regret that his "dear friend and colleague" Issai Schur, a Jewish mathematician, was prevented from entering the university following Hitler's taking power), over the course of the 1930s, he developed an intricate typology of mathematics. He posited that Jewish mathematicians had an intrinsically different, negative, psychological "type", incompatible with that of the greatest (non-Jewish) German mathematicians, and that the two approaches ought to be rigorously separated for the benefit of German students. He wrote at length about this, classifying various great mathematicians into "types" based on their ancestry, while trying to justify the classification based on their work. Here is an excerpt of his writing, taken from Segal's book (translation is his):

If, namely, one marks the provinces in which our great German mathematicians are rooted through generations on a race-information map of the areas of diffusion of blonde and swarthy races in Germany, there comes the remarkable discovery that they almost all come from the diffusion area of the blonde races, reaching partly to the boundary of the swarthy areas, and seem to fall completely in the swarthy area only in the case of Euler.

Bieberbach went on to found a journal, ``Deutsche Mathematik'' (German Mathematics), which was dedicated to his and others' racial theories on mathematical creativity, mixed in with research papers in mathematics, notably those of Oswald Teichmuller, a young Nazi who surpassed Bieberbach in both brilliance and fanatical dedication to the NS cause.

Teichmuller also worked in geometric function theory, and there is an active area of mathematics now called Teichmuller theory. As a final, creepy coincidence: while writing this, I realized that a number of prominent mathematicians with interests in this specific area have displayed disturbing destructive tendencies. André Bloch, best known for the (ever mysterious) Bloch theorem, stabbed his brother, aunt and uncle to death in 1917 "to prevent the spread of mental illness in his family". He did much of his mathematics from the mental hospital he was sent to after the incident. Ted Kaczynski was another promising geometric function theorist, before he retired from mathematics and devoted his time to different endeavors... eventually resurfacing as the Unabomber.

Some references:

• S. Segal, Mathematicians under the Nazis.
• T. Huckle, Juedische Mathematiker im ``Dritten Reich''
• J. Korevaar, Ludwig Bieberbach's Conjecture and its Proof by Louis de Branges.

That Gajah Mada, the famous prime minister of Majapahit who was (and still is) hailed as the greatest Majapahit hero, the person who united Indonesia at the time from Sumatera island to Malay Peninsula to Celebes and Mollucca, lied to the King of Pajajaran who thought he came to Majapahit in order to wed his daughter. She was in love and be loved by the King of Majapahit, but Gajah Mada demanded the king of Pajajaran gave his daughter as a tribute to Majapahit, not as a wife, and massacred the whole unarmed entourage when the king refused his atrocious demand, causing the princess to committed suicide, in the name of Majapahit's glory.

This deed of his is rarely mentioned in school history books though... All we were taught of was the guy united Indonesia and brought Majapahit to its golden age.

I always thought Gandhi was an admirable man and in many ways still do, but after reading his actual ideas for India in the Hind Swaraj I lost some respect for him and was really glad he was more a figurehead than the man in charge as his ideas, like dismantling the railroads or abandoning Western medicine, would have set India back a couple hundred years.

http://www.mkgandhi.org/swarajya/coverpage.htm

Washington rotated slaves in and out of the Presidental Mansion in Philadelphia so that they did not gain their freedom under Pennsylvania law. Dick move, George.

I've always known that a large number of the great victorian industrialists weren't saintly humans. They'd find it very difficult to succeed in such an aggressive, competitive market if they had a particularly powerful moral conscience restricting their potential profit margins.

However, there is one industrialist I had always admired, not necessarily because of the products he made, that just happens to be a coincidence, but on the way that he operated his business. Richard Arkwright was a brilliant industrialist, whose inventive brain kept him at the peak of the cottom boom in the mid to late 18th cenutry. His water-frame revolutionised the spinning of cotton and made the affair a lot easier and quicker, meaning that more raw cotton could be transformed into cotton lap. He continued to innovate, creating the carding engine which was not only a technical marvel that could outperform the spinning jenny, it was easier to perate and required less training. He was a mechanical master when it came to the art of spinning.

However, as with many of the industrialists of the time, he had his flaws, which is not a surprise. What was a surprise to me when I was first learning about him was his desire to create a monopoly in the north of England, taking advantage of the luddite style sidtrubances that were on going in the late 1770s. This is where my admiration for the man dwindled, as he tried desperately to get court backing against Lancashire mill owners who were in protest of his plans for total control of the cotton industries (he had already started and operated Scotlands cotton production, as well as the east midlands with factories in Nottingham) it came to light that the original design for the water frame was not necessarily his. The man he dveloped it with, clockmaker John Kay, had been given designs for a suspiciously similar machine by reed-maker Thomas Highs and rather than complete the task he gave the desings to Arkwright and they both claimed to have invented the water-frame.

On from this, Arkwright moved his business centre to Cromford, a very small village on the wrong side of the peak district to get the necessary coal and raw materials from the ports in Liverpool. He successfully lobbied for a canal to be built and upon completion profits were booming. But the village wasn't. So Arkwright build up workers cottages and moved people in. Whole families were employed, with large numbers of children from the age of seven, although this was increased to ten by the time Richard handed the business over to his son; However, towards the end of his tenure, nearly two-thirds of Arkwright's 1,150 employees were children. He allowed employees a week's holiday a year, but on condition that they could not leave the village.

He had complete control over his workforce, not only in the factories he owned, but in the houses they lived in, which he also owned. And in the village as a whole, which although he didn't own, he had such a massive influence over the work force he could certainly bankrupt the village simply by moving his mills, which he threatened to do on more than one occasion.

Even for the period, he was aggressive, difficult to work with, and arrogrant beyond belief. He would buy up his partners businesses and then dismantle them if they disobeyed his orders or didn't act upon his advice and, although a devout christian, held little regard for the quality of life of his workers.

And to think, I thought he was the Bees knees when I first started studying the industrial period. Now I know those knees are in fact names Richard Trevithick, Thomas Telford, and Abraham Darby III, and if anyone says a bad word against them I'll begrudginly ignore you.

Oh, and he also made his workers sing his song, once a year.

Verse pinned to the door of The Greyhound pub in Cromford

“Come let us all here join in one, 
And thank him for all favours done; 
Let’s thank him for all favours still 
which he hath done besides the mill.

Modistly drink liquor about, 
And see whose health you can find out; 
 This will I chuse before the rest 
 Sir Richard Arkwright is the best.

A few more words I have to say 
Success to Cromford’s market day.”

Song of 1778

I hope it had a good tune.

Sources

J.N. Merril, Arkwright of Cromford (1986, Matlock)

R.S. Fitton, The Strutts and the Arkwrights 1758-1830 : a study of the early factory system, (1958, Manchester)

S. D. Chapman, The early factory masters: the transition to the factory system in the midlands textile industry (1967)

J. J. Mason, ‘Arkwright, Sir Richard (1732–1792)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/645, accessed 17 Feb 2015]

EDIT: If this has poor spelling, blame my lack of energy and general lethargy. That and my awful proof reading ability

I think "Bonnie Prince Charlie" is pretty much assumed to be the good guy when people think about the Jacobites, and he's so heavily romanticized, it's no wonder. I thought the same at first, then learned more and figured he was very flawed, then learned more and figured, well, he really had no business leading much of anything. The most damning allegation against him is that Culloden may have been delayed (to disastrous effect) because Charles wanted to tarry a bit longer with his mistress. This is included in The Lyon in Mourning, which was a collection of letters and recollections gathered by Bishop Forbes, a fervent Jacobite that was arrested before anything even started. It was intended to be something of a hagiography of the Prince and the rebellion in the event of his triumphant return. So when your guy ends up looking bad when you're trying to make him look good, well...

Che Guevara. I was absolutely horrified when I found out he was the mastermind behind Cuba's concentration camps and had carried out mass executions in said camps. Perhaps his darkest legacy is the Cuban government sending homosexuals and AIDS victims to these camps after his death.

The allegations of adultery and plagiarism that have swirled around Martin Luther King Jr have always been disheartening to a Civil Rights student. In addition to this, another SCLC leader and one of the leaders of the Selma Voting Rights March, James Bevel, was charged with incest before his death in the early 2000's. Hard to see these guys the same way afterwards.

I find Sun Yat Sen to have been a deeply admirable person and I don't think he carried out any massacres or anything, but in a broader sense I'm just not so sure he was, well, a particularly good leader. Inspirational figure, absolutely, but you get the sense that he could have handled the 1911 revolution better.

Ataturk is another figure I admire greatly, and in general most of the criticism he gets is the result of his prominence in a, shall we say, controversial period of history. For example, during the Armenian genocide he was on the other side of Anatolia, and I don't think it is really fair to blame the Smyrna fire on him. That being said, he did implement some very destructive policies towards ethnic minorities, particularly regarding the Kurds, and he also bares some of the ample blame for the catastrophe of the population exchanges.

Also, he banned cool Ottoman hats. I mean, what the heck, man?

This is more like the worst thing I've read BY historical figures I thought I really liked, but whatever.

I was reading about Joseph Lequinio, who was a member of the French National Convention and was as far as I know the only member who argued for some kind of proto-feminism. I was willing to be a fan of the dude until I found the pamphlet where he discusses whether genocide would be a good way to deal with the civil war in the Vendée. He reaches the conclusion that if the population was only 40 000 or so, that would be the way to do it, but the population is too big for that to be practical. So they should try other means before slaughtering all 500 000 inhabitants.

Now the most effectual way to arrive at this end would be by joyous and fraternal missions, frank and familiar harangues, civic repasts, and, above all, dancing.

Dancing. And if that doesn't work, just fucking murder everyone.