Jean van Heijenoort

Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort was a French-Dutch historian of mathematical logic. He was also a personal secretary and bodyguard to Leon Trotsky from 1932 to 1939, and an American Trotskyist until 1947. Born in France in 1912 to a Dutch father and French mother, he experienced anti-Dutch sentiment during WWI. He joined the Trotskyist movement in 1932 and became Trotsky's secretary due to his fluency in multiple languages. After Trotsky's exile and murder, Van Heijenoort moved to New York, worked for the Socialist Workers Party, and was involved in the Fourth International. He was expelled from the SWP in 1947. He earned a PhD in mathematics from New York University in 1949 and shifted his focus to logic and philosophy of mathematics. He taught at Columbia University and Brandeis University. His notable work includes "From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic" (1967). He was murdered in Mexico City in 1986.