Alabama Shooting and Non-Euclidean Geometry

The unfortunate shooting at the University of Alabama happened because a professor was denied tenure and decided to show her anger by shooting her fellow professors. The accused professor Amy Anderson has been at the University on a tenure track since 2003.

It started with Robert Moore.

Robert Moore, one of the most famous American mathematicians created a splash in early 1900s when he proved that one of that one of Hilbert's axioms was redundant. David Hilbert was one of the most influential mathematicians of the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries and Moore was a a undergraduate student at the University of Texas. He proved redundancy while answering an assignment problem of another famous mathematician, George Halsted (who introduced Non-Euclidean geometry to the United States). Halsted was impressed by Moore and wanted to have him as an assitant. He recommended to the University to hire Moore as an instructor. However, those days the university board of trustees were powerful and frequently interfered in hiring and firing decisions. The University ended up hiring another well connected local candidate for the post, which infuriated Halsted and he started publishing several articles that criticized the university. In response, the University decided to fire Halsted even though he had been a faculty for 19 years and an expert in his field.

This case became notorious in the academic institutions of the country and accelerated the adoption of the tenure concept, to provide professors right to academic freedom and protect when they dissent from prevailing opinion. Later, the American Association of University Professors formally laid down the principles of academic freedom and tenure which was adopted by most of the universities. One of the recommendations was that the academic tenure probationary period be seven years.

This was Amy Anderson's seventh year at the university.