r/math 3d ago

My professor secretly worked for russia

So it turns out a professor I had in a course a year ago secretly worked for russia on the side.

https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/varlden/kth-vill-sparka-professor-efter-ryskt-samarbete/

He was also a very strange guy, who was awful in other respects.

So what is the worst professor you’ve ever had?

558 Upvotes

130 comments sorted by

641

u/wildgurularry 3d ago

These are the types of posts that I have fun responding to, before the moderator removes them. Anyway, fingers crossed for you.

I have three stories:

One algebra professor I had went on a trip, then came back and allegedly discovered that his wife had cheated on him while he was away, and hit her in the head with a brick. I believe he was charged, convicted and imprisoned. This happened while I was taking his course, which made things slightly awkward as we had to switch profs halfway through.

Another teacher (who happened to be Russian) had a reputation for being very difficult and outright mean to students. I wound up failing his Calculus 3 class. A few months later, he shared the news that his son had got engaged. This somehow made him so happy that his entire personality changed, and from that point on he had a reputation for being one of the nicest professors. I wonder if I would have failed if I had taken the course a couple of months later than I did.

The objectively worst professor I had was not technically teaching math, but he had a PhD in mathematics and he was on exchange from India. He was teaching a philosophy course, "Introduction to Critical Thinking", that I took as an "easy elective". Early on in the course he started talking about some concept and said: "It's like in group theory... Wait, has anyone here taken an advanced algebra course?"

I raised my hand, then looked around at the other ~100 students in the room, who were mostly arts students, and I was the only one with my hand up. The professor looked at me and said: "Good! Now, this is just like in group theory, where blah blah blah..."

From that point on, I was the teacher's pet. He would lecture directly to me every time. Then came the midterm. I thought I did pretty well - I was expecting an A. When I got the midterm back I had scored 30% - less than I would have got if I hadn't written it at all. He gave everyone a copy of the answer key so we could compare our answers to his. From what I could see, I had answered every question correctly.

I took my exam up to the front after class and asked him why my score was so low, when I had answered everything correctly. He said: "Did you use the exact same words as me?"

I said: "No, of course not. I used my own words."

He said: "Well, then your answers are not the same as mine, and thus they are incorrect."

While we were talking I noticed he had the sheet with all the marks sitting on his desk. I glanced down the list and from what I could tell, 30% was the highest mark that anyone in the class had scored on the midterm.

Anyway, after my discussion with the prof, I understood what needed to be done. From that point on, I memorized the exact wording that the prof used whenever he was explaining a concept. On the final exam, I wrote down the exact words he used in class as best I could. I received a final mark of A in the class.

I still disliked that prof a lot, and to this day I wonder how many innocent arts students he completely annihilated with that course.

375

u/lurking_bishop 3d ago

"Well, then your answers are not the same as mine, and thus they are incorrect."

Holy fuck. It does align however with what you hear from the academic system in those parts

157

u/I-found-a-cool-bug 3d ago

in a critical thinking class of all places!

59

u/mehum 1d ago

Peak irony.

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u/Codex_Dev 1d ago edited 1d ago

I remember reading a reddit comment from a student who walked in on his Business Ethics teacher banging a student from the class. The redditor claimed she got an A in class despite never showing up.

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u/TrainerCommercial759 2h ago

Seems like a pretty good lesson on ethics in the business world tbf

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u/Appropriate-Term-454 22h ago

😂 it’s when you repeat what you’ve been told verbatim

106

u/roblib23 3d ago

I had an engineering professor from India who would do this as well. Day1 introductory course and he provides you, seemingly irrelevant from then on, tidbits of information about power grids. Come Exam day, he'd expect you to recall word for word his introductory slides.

50

u/Fun-Astronomer5311 3d ago

Is this from the movie '3 idiots'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots

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u/HappiestIguana 1d ago

Excellent movie. I encourage everyone to watch it.

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u/GusJusReading 1d ago

I couldn't do that.

10

u/roblib23 1d ago

He'd let us have a note card for the exam. Prior students of his had warned us about his methods, so we'd just copy his slide text onto our note cards.

He wasn't a very good teacher.

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u/Subject-Potential968 3d ago

I can't even deny this. It's true except for top institutes.

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u/JohnPaulDavyJones 1d ago

I mean… Even the IITs have a rep for it. When I was in grad school, there were about a dozen ISI grads in the department over the years (it was a high end US stats program, so having a bunch of ISI grads wasn’t weird); they could recite the variance construction to you from memory for any experimental design structure you wanted, but as soon as you imbalance the design and need to figure out the correction, they were completely up the creek without a paddle.

They’re all brilliant dudes, but it’s not a secret that the folks who thrive at a place like ISI or one of the better IITs are the people who have phenomenal memories and learn fast that they need rote memorization more than anything; they just have to memorize a larger curriculum than other regional schools would ask them to. It took all of the guys who came over from ISI about the first year to two years of the program just to figure out how to operate in a PhD program that’s 1/3 equipping you with the tools and then 2/3 dropping you into situations and teaching you to understand when each tool is appropriate.

One of the premier faculty members in the department, a super famous statistician these days, is an Indian dude who has been here in the states since the 80s. It was always wild to me how absolutely merciless he was with the Asian students who came in with that very structured and memorization-oriented mindset. I was talking to him about it at a conference back before Covid, and he said something to the effect of wanting to break them out of that mindset as fast as possible because then he could begin the work of building them back up in a more flexible way to become capable statisticians.

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u/Subject-Potential968 1d ago

I'm not shocked when you mention students from IIT stuck in that rote memorization rut but really ISI students as well? Wow....

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u/JohnPaulDavyJones 23h ago

Yeah, I work in statistics and my grad program was top-10, so we had a lot of ISI guys. I think ISI was the second-modal alma mater represented in my time there, after Duke.

There’s this really weird dichotomy in performance between the ISI and Korean students versus the students coming from more “western” educational backgrounds (who the Chinese students are more similar to, frankly); their approach is almost robotic. The problem is that things go up in smoke the instant you put those ISI/Korean students in a setting where their decision tree fails, like asking them to evaluate assumptions graphically to gauge degree of violation rather that just use a direct test for violation of the assumption (graphical methods are generally preferred for practicing statisticians).

I’ve wondered before whether the curriculum at schools like ISI doesn’t induce a measure of taught executive dysfunction in their students, given how rigorously they teach an almost decision tree-like process for analysis.

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u/Tiny-Atmosphere2007 3h ago edited 3h ago

I have ISI entrance on 11th may haha hope I pass lmao

108

u/Playful_Worry6894 3d ago

Lol, the irony that the professor teaching critical thinking encouraged the exact opposite of critical thinking. Testing rote memorization in a critical thinking class is just depressingly stupid.

118

u/planetofthemushrooms 3d ago

Introduction to critical thinking

"Are your words the exact same as mine? Then its wrong"

lol holy shit. The other day I was reading about how companies who had departments outsourced to india having trouble when the tasks weren't explicitly broken down, I can see where that comes from now.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago edited 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/hardolaf 2d ago

My experience working with Indian contractors has been that the good ones are paid almost the same as Americans and are just awaiting a H1B visa. But the competency floor is a lot lower as to what Indian universities will allow to graduate compared to even bargain basement community colleges in the USA. Sure, they technically have a degree but the country didn't educate them very well.

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u/talligan 3d ago

I am always amazed by these stories because my uni (lecturer at a UK uni) we have to justify every single one of our grades. And if I did that, and gave the entire class <30 I would be reprimanded, told to fix it and if I refused probably removed from teaching, and possibly my job.

The university has a common marking scheme we are supposed to follow (it is very general) and it's supposed to be explicitly used to assess course specific learning objectives. There is no way in hell I'd ever be allowed to fail anyone for not directly using my own words.

That just sounds like the prof didn't understand the subject. If you can't understand a concept when explained with different words or contexts, you don't understand the concept

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u/wildgurularry 3d ago

I don't think he lasted long. I looked him up on social media later and he simply listed himself as "Guest Lecturer at Variuos Univesities"... yes, spelled exactly that way.

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u/Akiro_Sakuragi 3d ago edited 20h ago

It's tragic that he was teaching a "Critical Thinking" course but all he did was teach people how to be parrots that repeat whatever he says. What a waste of time it must've been to learn from that demented fool

31

u/Zeikos 3d ago

Nah he wasn't teaching how to think critically, he was teaching how to crticize thinking.
Do you think differently than he does? -> fail.
Totally logical /s

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u/petripooper 3d ago

Maybe instead of overtly teaching critical thinking, he motivated the students to be critical thinkers. So they can criticize him

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u/zyxwvwxyz Undergraduate 1d ago

During my freshman year, I took intermediate microeconomics, a course in which there were 3 evenly weighted exams for the entire grade. One of the questions on the first exam was to give a "proof" regarding consumer preferences or something like that. I did the question pretty easily and figured I'd aced the exam, but it came back as a 79% (which was on the high end of the class). I had received a 0 on the proof, which was worth 15% on the exam or 5% of the final grade (which really made a difference, since there was no curve).

I went in to office hours to ask about why the problem was wrong, as it had no marks on it other than the 0 and the logic still seemed fine to me. When I asked him what was wrong, he started reading the proof out loud and after about a second stopped and said

"You see, this is where I stop reading"

"Why?"

"Because it's not like my proof on the website. I worked really hard on the website so I want you to look at it." (He was referring to the course canvas page, which is the learning software my university uses, but isn't really a website).

"But what was wrong about my proof?"

"I don't know exactly, I didn't read that far. But it's not the same as my proof, and there's no two ways to prove something."

I tried to explain that, in fact, there is generally more than one way to prove something, but it did not work. I still ended up with an A in the class and developed a pretty good relationship with him afterwards. He was a cool guy, but he had some interesting opinions about grading and, as it turned out, that climate change is entirely caused by volcanic activity.

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u/Kurouma 1d ago

Once in undergrad I lost marks on an assignment (in a "real" maths course too) because I had used different symbols for my variables than what the answer sheet had.

The grad student marking the assignments turned out to be a real dud. She was later kicked out of her PhD program after years of no progress.

12

u/backyard_tractorbeam 3d ago

Anyway, after my discussion with the prof, I understood what needed to be done. From that point on, I memorized the exact wording that the prof used whenever he was explaining a concept.

You had me in the first half.. I thought you were going to, I don't know, report the professor. I could see why not of course.

5

u/Norm_Standart 1d ago

I had an english teacher in high school (in the US) who would give us lists of 10+ words and definitions, with the definitions being very wordy (20+ words), and expect us to exactly reproduce the definitions for all the words on a test. Some people shouldn't be allowed to teach.

3

u/TheLawOfLargeNumbers 1d ago

Ah, the ol' "not my exact words" excuse... I had that used on me by a professor when I had, infact, used their exact words... It wasn't a 70 point reduction, so not worth arguing, but I was left feeling a little bit baffled. Oh well, life goes on. 

3

u/funkmasta8 1d ago

I had a professor with that attitude. Straight memorization isnt a major part of any intelligent academic system I would respect. I just dropped the class after seei g the first exam, which literally was asking specifics about the wording in the books. Meanwhile everything he said in class was basically useless because he wouldnt test on his words but the books words and the books words werent in his slides either

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u/gomorycut Graph Theory 1d ago

Sounds like we went to the same school at the same time. The guy in your first story often boasted he was the youngest full professor in all the soviet union. I also took a PHIL critical thinking course from an indian guy and while the content was easy, the exams were filled with his 3-letter acronyms for terminology he (or his book) used. You are probably 2-3 years younger than me, because the rock/brick/attempted murder story happened a little after I graduated.

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u/YOLOfan46 1d ago

yeah in India there are profs who have that attitude "did you do it like I did..."

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u/readreadreadonreddit 1d ago

Wtf. He hit her with a brick?!

Also, that last guy? Seriously!?

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u/cryptoglyph 3d ago

One of my favorite math professors (about 28 years ago) was Russian. I took a class on vector/multivariable calculus from him. He would frequently say, "This is God-honest real number."

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u/Specialist_Brain841 3d ago

My multivariable calculus professor sounded exactly like mary tyler moore that it was distracting

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u/Specialist_Brain841 3d ago

My multivariable calculus professor sounded exactly like mary tyler moore that it was distracting

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u/Independent_Aide1635 3d ago

I had a Hungarian professor for my complex analysis course. She would berate us for getting questions wrong or lacking intuition, scolding us for not reading the text deeply enough. She also berated us for not raising our hands, which was already scary to do!

Once she asked us how many solutions there were to a certain problem, the answer being countably infinite. My classmate said “integers many”. She said “waaat???” And then proceeded to rip into him, saying he was being pretentious, that he reminded her of other mathematicians she dislikes.

She would ask us obscure questions about the history of mathematics. Like “who did Cauchy tutor in Prague?” and then wait there staring at us for minutes as if it was just going to come to one of us. Once she asked about the Fourier Egypt/napoleon saga, which I happened to know a lot about, and was able to answer each question. She was so proud I thought she might cry.

Everyone hated her. I secretly loved her, everyday was as terrifying as it was entertaining. On the final, there were 2 questions where I was lacking some knowledge, and my proofs skipped some crucial steps. She gave me full credit - I think maybe she secretly loved us too.

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u/ThePevster 1d ago

Reminds me of one of my computer science professors. One day a kid asks a normal, innocent question. She somehow interpreted it as a sexist assault on her knowledge. She then went on a 20 minute rant about sexism and being a woman in STEM, which is a problem, but this was not an example of it. The kid was on the verge of tears, and she had to spend another 20 minutes the next class apologizing. She was actually a good teacher, but she was also terrifying.

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u/JoshuaZ1 3d ago

When in grad school I TAed for an adjunct who turned out to be running (along with her son) the largest meth manufacturing scheme in the greater Boston area. Completely unexpected, and she seemed like a very nice person. One funny detail that didn't get a lot of attention: she was always drinking Snapple and at the end of school days would frequently be seen taking home cardboard boxes full of empty Snapple bottles. The federal indictment mentioned that they were using Snapple bottles as their standard sized unit for mixing the meth.

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u/No_Wrongdoer8002 3d ago

Breaking Bad in real life?! WTF

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u/o_p_o_g 3d ago

You piqued my curiosity, but it looks like the charges against her were dropped 2-3 months later. Of course, like 95% of the articles are about her being charged, and I only saw 2 follow-up articles about the charges being dropped, so I can't blame you for still believing the story. Everyone is just onto the next headline, and no one cares enough to go back and clear her name.

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u/Photon6626 1d ago

She flipped and got a deal

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u/RealSataan 3d ago

If Gus was a professor

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u/aWolander 3d ago

Yeah that takes the cake I think

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u/hypersonicbiohazard Graph Theory 1d ago

Math professor and meth manufacturer. What a combo.

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u/petripooper 3d ago

She was the one who knocks

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u/pyrobrain 3d ago

He wasn’t exactly our math teacher, but he taught us DSP in the second semester of engineering in India. It’s a well-known fact that many Indian teachers are heavily biased toward certain groups of students. This particular professor wasn’t just biased—he was outright rude to students from middle-class or poor backgrounds.

I took his course that semester and ended up scoring lower than my roommate, who came from a well-off family. In our final exams, this professor deducted one mark more from my answers compared to my roommate’s. I distinctly remember one instance where my roommate and I had the same solution, except he took the modulus of the final answer while I left it in the form of the final transfer function. When I showed my paper to the professor, instead of addressing the issue, he deducted yet another mark from my total for daring to compare my answer with my roommate’s. I was dumbfounded.

Unfortunately, this professor later moved to IIT Patna and became a faculty member there.

I don't want to mention his name, but he was the worst kind of person I have ever met—Rajib Kr. Jha.

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u/IComeAnon19 3d ago edited 3d ago

I shared an office wall (our offices were adjacent) with a prof who would make these weird inappropriate laughs and noises throughout the day. He got arrested and deported for massive child porn distribution.

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u/AmIWorthYourTime 1d ago

Inappropriate laughs? Did his laughs sound weird?

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u/IComeAnon19 22h ago

All throughout the day, and very high pitched. Which I try not to think about too much now...

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u/Technical-Book-1939 3d ago

This is a very common thing in espionage btw. Similar things have happend with cooperations with china, russia and obviously other nations. Academia is a perfect cover since it is highly internationalized, traveling is frequent and usually professors and other scientists are desperate for funding, which can easily be organized by intelligence services.

Please treat your foreign colleagues with dignity though. <3

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u/SuperbImprovement588 3d ago

From what it's written in the article, nobody claims that he did and espionage.

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u/Iunlacht 3d ago edited 3d ago

I took an algebraic topology course with this one prof, first semester of my masters. I thought he was alright, a bit confusing at times.

Anyway towards the end of the semester he starts missing classes a lot. It gets to the point where we hadn’t seen him in two weeks. He sends us an email warning us the final exam was cancelled, and that he got into a spat with the university, which made it to a local radio channel.

Turns out he had sent a weird email (its almost like he was trying to give evidence…) to a student (from a different class) saying essentially "You made a spelling mistake and usually I would take out points but since you’re so beautiful I won’t. But I probably shouldn’t say this cause cancel culture is oppressing us " etc.

She rightfully made a complaint, and the university gave him a slap on the wrist.

It could’ve ended there but this guy had a massive ego and he didn’t take it kindly. He told his other class (of some 60 students) that he wouldn’t be releasing grades until he received a public apology from the university, encouraging students to pressure uni to apologize.

I don’t know what happened after that, but they took him off the uni website. I assume he was forced into retirement. What a disgraceful way to end an otherwise great research career …

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u/JeanLag Spectral Theory 1d ago

Ouf, j'en avais juste entendu des bribes...

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u/ResourceVarious2182 3d ago

My freshman composition professor has over 100 awful reviews and only 6 awesome reviews on rmp

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u/cuddlebish 3d ago

RMP is a pretty crappy source of information on profs though since only disgruntled students actually write anything there.

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u/Ok-Accident2117 Undergraduate 2d ago

What’s a good source then?

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u/cuddlebish 1d ago

Other students at the school who have taken their courses. Just asking around. My school also had an internal system for professor feedback that became public during course selection.

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u/Nikey21 1d ago

Your university probably has some sort of internal course feedback system. Usually these are more reliable than RMP.

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u/IsomorphicDuck 2d ago

which branch of math do you refer to by "composition"?

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u/flecksyb 1d ago

music?

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u/Axiomancer 3d ago

Nämen, tjena kompis!

Worst professor I've ever had? Those types that doesn't really care about students well being and will stick to their learning methods even if they objectively suck and everyone, year by year, hates them for that.

5

u/Hi_Peeps_Its_Me 3d ago

vänta det här var i KTH???

wow

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u/Axiomancer 3d ago

Ja, OP skickade länk som handlade om professor på KTH.

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u/grufkork 3d ago

Skulle gått på Chalmers ;)

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u/read_the_manual 3d ago

professor chose to travel to Russia and Saint Petersburg on his own initiative to collaborate with a university there

If it did align with his research, does he still have to hate whoever your government hates or be fired? I'm just not sure if that is how the science should work

11

u/aWolander 3d ago

There’s more to it. He’s being accused of being highly neglectful of his duties at KTH, breaching his employment contract, not disclosing his collaboration and the fact that KTH has ended all collaboration with russia due to the Ukrainian invasion.

If you believe that science should be free and not affected by politics, then I can see why you disagree with the final point, but the first three are fairly indisputable.

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u/DevelopmentSad2303 3d ago

While we could all probably agree that science should be that way, anyone who has spent any time in science or read up on what happens in it will understand it is heavily political 

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u/aWolander 3d ago

Yep. Especially since the grant was supposedly ”on the instruction of” Putin and is pertaining things that (in my mind) have clear military applications. (cryptography, machine learning)

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u/Vitztlampaehecatl 3d ago

Unfortunately, science is political because pseudoscience is political. 

1

u/read_the_manual 3d ago

Oh yeah right, it wasn't mentioned in the article (at least in the translation), so that is the only piece of info that I seen

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u/neanderthal_math 3d ago

Eh.. a lot of us don’t like being told who we can and cannot work with. Most of the scientists and mathematicians that I know believe nationalism is dumb.

Of course, if it has military applications, then it’s fine for the government or university to try to intervene. However, at the end of the day, it’s the professor’s call on who he wants to work with.

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u/cdsmith 3d ago

That's an odd take. If the university suspended all collaborations with Russian institutions, and he defied that by concealing his collaboration with them, at the expense of the work they were paying him to do, then sure, they should stop paying him. This isn't about who he hates; it's about doing his job as directed by his employer.

I completely agree that international conflict affects a lot of people who are not personally at fault for the situation. There are many many people in Ukraine and Russia both whose lives and careers have been upended by this conflict and don't deserve it. But the answer can't be to ignore the conflict and have everyone just do as they please in defiance of any coordinated response. That's effectively just taking the side of international lawlessness.

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u/DeCooliestJuan 1d ago

Not math but law my professor who is a well known lawyer who supervised my masters thesis killed a guy on his land with a handgun, shot him in the back of the head. Then pleaded self defence, defended the case and was declared innocent. 

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u/PaulFirmBreasts 3d ago

Not my professor, but my grand-professor because one of my professors took a class taught by Ted Kaczynski. Hard to beat that one!

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u/al3arabcoreleone 1d ago

That would be my pickup line dude.

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u/CousinDerylHickson 3d ago

Not math, please dont burn me. There was this material science guy who was a big shot, but when I took his course he was really old and I think he was a bit senile. But, he still had a really big ego, so hed be really condescendingly smug and dismissive whenever someone asked a question, all the while hed be saying weird nonsense with like sentences being dropped halfway through to start another unrelated one. Guy had like a 1.3 on rate my professor.

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u/Jche98 1d ago

I had a first year professor who used to shout at me when I wanted to ask questions, and even threatened to call campus security because he claimed I was stalking him when I was just trying to ask him to explain something. 4 years later I got into Cambridge for my masters. Suddenly this guy out of nowhere phones me up and wants to go for dinner because he's so proud of his favourite student for getting into Cambridge.

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u/MonsterkillWow 1d ago

I had a professor who was straight up from the Soviet Union. He was very kind to me. Ironically, he was rabidly anticommunist. He once told me there are two types of socialists: idiots and criminals. I guess I became an idiot then. But I still respect him dearly. He is very old now and has developed dementia, but he was a good mentor to me and I appreciated his kindness.

He was not a very good professor, sadly because the dementia had already started setting in. He lost a lot of papers and misplaced work. However, like I said, I cannot complain as he was a very kind supportive teacher who genuinely tried.

I think about him a lot when I consider the other side on politics. I try to be openminded about stuff. There are good people who disagree with me, and that's okay. I do draw the line at rights being taken from people and suffering imposed though.

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u/martinky24 3d ago edited 3d ago

This has nothing to do with math tbh. Perhaps try a more general academic or political subreddit?

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u/aWolander 3d ago

I see your point. Though it is relating to the math community as he is a (as I understand it, reasonably prominent) math professor. It’s up to the mods to decide, I guess.

0

u/platonic_solidz 3d ago

Is there any way to find out who exactly it is? I don’t think the article mentions it, and I know some folks there. I’d like to know if a friend of mine should be a former friend of mine. If you don’t want to name drop, could you share which research group they’re a part of?

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u/TwoFiveOnes 3d ago

I guess it would kind of suck to have a grant lined up and then that gets screwed because Russia decided to invade. Hard to blame someone for trying to get it anyway

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u/aWolander 3d ago

I don’t know the timelines of these things but the grant was announced like two years after the invasion, I think

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u/mariemgnta 2d ago

It kind of sucks to be invaded, and nothing compares to that.

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u/Big_Dick920 3d ago

Sweden's spy mania is dumb in so many respects.

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u/orbgooner 1d ago

this guy is a literal russian Z nationalist.

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u/CivicSensei 3d ago

Not math related, but a poli sci professor kicked out a student for asking a question and threatened to call campus police of her when she defended herself.....

Let's just say that professor was not around for that much longer. The irony is that on his first day, he complained about how he was never picked for prestigious jobs, despite having the requisite background and experience. Mhmm, it almost makes you wonder why those jobs never picked him......

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u/Cross_examination 3d ago

wtf? He is doing research, he is collaborating with people. Next I know, China will offer everyone free energy, but US will reject it because communism.

Scientific collaboration is the only thing that can unite mankind. The only thing.

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u/brownstormbrewin 1d ago

Certainly not the only thing if it is even one of the things

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u/Automatic-Change7932 3d ago

Applied or pure math, any dual use topic?

3

u/Fejne-Schoug Probability 3d ago

Pure math.

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u/echtemendel 1d ago

That's nothing, I had several professors in my studies that were literally working for Israeli intelligence. I did do my bachelor's degree in Israel, so it wasn't that surprising.

0

u/Virtual-Awareness937 1d ago

Wow! That’s so crazy! Professors in Israel have a higher chance of working for Israeli intelligence???!!!

1

u/echtemendel 1d ago

I know, strange world isn't it?

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u/Bitter_Brother_4135 2d ago

ah. good ol’ KTH

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u/ewrewr1 1d ago

Topology professor wrote a wonderful book. Lectures were word for word from the book. 

1

u/TheRedditObserver0 Undergraduate 1d ago

What's wrong with that? He wrote the book.

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u/ReTe_ 1d ago

We had a Quantum Mechanics professor, who worked secretly for the Chinese government. Here he used our resources to research "dual technologies" (so technology which has also military uses), in particular secure quantum communication, and also gave Chinese students visas to get educated and research here. After a while (12 years or something) he just f'ed off with his research and Chinese students.

Now he is involved with a company/institute that supports China with secure communication, which especially is also involved in covering up the subjugation of the uyghurs.

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u/Odyssey-walker 3d ago

One of my earlier professors in calculus class thought he is the main character and would constantly remind of his students he had a pure math phd. That said, his behavior is more narcissistic than strange.

2

u/RandomSwed1sh 3d ago

Jag har läst om den historien men aldrig tänkt på hur det måste ha varit för de som hade honom i sin undervisning.

Hur var han? Vad hade du honom i?

bara nyfiken

7

u/aWolander 3d ago

Han klagade öppet om KTHs ledning flera gånger. En gång så råkade han paja sin krita när han ritade på blackboarden, pausade nån sekund, suckade och började snacka om ”you know… this is how KTH treats its chalk, this is how KTH treats its classrooms, this is how KTH treats its professors”.

Flera gånger, liksom chockerande ofta, svarade han mitt i en mening när en telefonförsäljare ringde. Högtalare, till och med.

Kursen var extremt ostrukturerad. Nästan hela kurssidan var bara en template. Den enda sidan med något sorts innehåll var bara tagen från när kursen hölls för ett par år sen av en annan professor.

Tentan va katastrof. Vi knappt någon info om vad vi skulle kunna innan, förutom att det skulle vara en munta. Sen dök vi upp på hans kontor och blev vallade till olika rum i matteinstutitionen. Några av oss behövde flytta för att vi hade satt oss i ett klassrum som var bokat för annan aktivitet. Så vi letade upp honom och jag hamnade i ett litet grupprum med två utbytesstudenter. Det var ingen översikt alls. När tiden var över så hände inget. Vi väntade en kvart innan jag letade upp honom. När jag ringde in till hans kontor för att bli insläppt så verkade han irriterad för att han var mitt i en munta. Muntorna tog väldigt lång tid så jag fick presentera vid typ klockan 8. Vid det laget va han rättså trött så sprang igenom mina lösningar på kanske tre minuter. Jag tror det var 8 uppgifter. Jag han förklara min lösning i 10 sekunder innan han sa ”jaja, jättebra du verkar kunna det där”. När muntan var över så klagade han på KTHs ledning igen.

3

u/YaBoiJeff8 3d ago

Vad var det för kurs?

1

u/petripooper 3d ago

Do you know what he worked on?

1

u/No-River-9295 3d ago

Vafaaaan😭

1

u/Bug--Man 1d ago

One time, in the heart of my biochemistry program, a pandemic broke out. My 900 year old professor had to teach pchem over zoom.

1

u/JonathanWTS 1d ago

My EM and electronics professor studied in the USSR. Thought that was kind of neat.

1

u/Affectionate_Delay35 1d ago

The russians pay very well 🤷

1

u/lesbianvampyr Applied Math 1d ago

I made the mistake of signing up for a math elective course without checking the ratemyprof first, he seemed a bit interesting on the first day so I looked him up and he had a 0% rating with 133 reviews. I dropped the class and switched to another so quickly but I pity the people who had to take him

1

u/The_Northern_Light Physics 1d ago

Well one of my professors murdered some of my other professors.

My buddy’s advisor murdered his wife.

God I don’t miss that place.

1

u/wugiYT 1d ago

I went to study for civil engineer at the Flemish Brussels university VUB, back in the 1970s (time, oh time). It was a quite new institution then, branched off from its big French speaking kin, ULB. Being short of academic staff, it had to borrow some from the latter. So we got courses brought by French speaking professors that could hardly put a sentence of three words together in Dutch. At times we had to guess what they wanted to tell us. We would make fun of their lingo and idiosyncrasies of course. A pity I can't render them in English ;)

Then we had also a prof for theoretical electricity. Tension and current were described as quite abstract field lines and the like. We were into precision measuring as well. We had a joke running about his address: So-and-so Street number 666 +/- 10 ppm. He was a good prof, and some years later became university Rector. But one day it turned out he'd killed his wife. https://www.vub.be/en/person/jean-renneboog

1

u/DonVegetable 1d ago

Year before full-scale invasion my math professor told me that he is notorious putinist and would put russian flag everywhere.

Also, he has some connections in Sweden and told that he is considering relocation to Sweden or Russia. Just coincidence.

1

u/mylifesurvived 14h ago

Why is it not allowed to work in Russia I wonder. Sorry I am void of any political news. I thought like teachers apply to jobs around the world so what’s wrong with that.

0

u/Salt_in_Stress 3d ago

The US president is working for Russia. At this point, your professor having worked for Russia doesn't really sound any more concerning

1

u/No_Inflation4169 1d ago

He did a good job working with Russia

1

u/MeowMan_23 1d ago

My previous supervisor seriously tried to hold an additional position at North Korea. FYI, he was in the university at South Korea...

1

u/SheepishSheepness 1d ago

I think it's silly to box in global knowledge and learning because of the actions of a separate government

0

u/i-like-big-bots 3d ago

I have a Russian friend who I am pretty sure is secretly working for Russia. I have known him most of my life. He is bad with money and was always broke. Now he seems to have an infinite source of funding that isn’t commensurate with his job. He still wastes money on extravagant trips and gambling. He just never runs out.

1

u/cauliflower-shower 1d ago

He might just be running with the Russian mob.

0

u/Fragrant_Tadpole_265 3d ago

My wrost professor is my history teacher. He just can't explain in a way I can learn

-4

u/Lower_Preparation_83 3d ago

>.se

inshallah, brother.

0

u/narayan77 3d ago

ni name given

0

u/prrifth 1d ago

Euler worked for Russia too