The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-01-09
BACK FROM CELL
Prison Years Pass Quickly for
Kansas College Teacher.
Mathematical Genius Earns
$4,000 While in Prison.

Kansas City, Jan. "a gray haired
angular man of pedagogical appear
ance sat at an office desk in the Ridge
building gazing out of a window that
two years. he unused.
Prison years were not long Tor
Michael Angelo McGinnis, former pro-
fessor of mathematics in Wichita
college, who returned to Kansas City
after six years and seven months i'm
prisonment in Jefferson City. Intri-
cate mathematics, his lifelong delight,
illuminated his spare moments.
Now the profit of the prison years
may be an award of 100000 marks,
bequeathed by DR.. Paul Wolfskehl of
Darmstadt, Germany, to the mathema-
tician who should satisfy the Royal
Academy of Scientific Research at
Gottinger with a solution and proof of
of no two powers except squares is
itself a power of the same degree"
Proves That He Is Right.
This proof fills forty pages of a
book being set up in Norwood, Mass,
and financed for the former prison
engineers at Meadowdale, Wash. Sup
Elementary to this, McGinnis is CIV
ing the reduction of the general eQua-
ton of the fifth degree to an equation
of the fourth degree, the reduction de-
pending on three or four theoremS OF
his own analysis
IT know I have proved Fermats
theorem-the $4,000 prize is mine l
believe unless some other is ahead
with the required printed proof" Nc.
Ginnis said to a visitor. You see, II
man thinks he has proved theorem
and does not know that he has, he
doesn't know enough to prove 1t IN
the first place." In seven years 1000
unsatisfactory solutions have been re-
ceived by the German academy.
answer
charges made against me-" McGinnis
continued ct never claimed to have
squared the circle I am sane. thor
oughly sane-and what I have ac-
com plished will rest or fall with the
real authorities in the science"
He Knows Prison Life.
In addition to the mathematical
mysteries, McGinnis will make public
some studies in criminology. In SIX
years he questioned 1,4oo prisoners,
getting at the real causes that MADE
thin victims of temptations
And I know" he added, simply.
"A man cannot describe pain unless
he has suffered But if he has suffer
ed and has the power OF words, ne
can pring that pain into expression
"A visitor in the Missouri penlten-
tiary seeing the lines coming Slowly
in from their work, and learning what
that work was might declare the pr1s-
oner's lot not unhappy True, some
are hung UP Dy their nanuS lor pun
ishment, but why did they rebel
against work when it is really their
salvation, the visitor asks himself.
Injustice Hurts Convicts.
"Now / know it is not the work, but
the pace that is set in that work, the
fact that the prison labor feels--an 10 q
1nows-that he is a slave to the proflf
of contractors growing rich off what is
a misfortune to both him and society.
The man society is trying to REFORM rs
face to face each day with this awfui
Injustice and it rankles daily.
McGinnis was sent to the peni6en-
tiary from Kansas City June "a, 1910
He was convicted of completely IN the
forgery of deed.
McGinnis was educated in Wisconsin
and for many years was professor OF
mathematics in a college at vienna,
Kan. He has published seVeral Tex
haors on mathematics among which
his Algebra is said to be one OF the
best of it's kind.