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A Yale computer scientist whose 1980s work on parallel computation, including the Linda coordination language, shaped how large systems handle simultaneous processes, and whose 1991 book Mirror Worlds anticipated much of what became networked, always-on software years before the web made it ordinary. In 1993 he was maimed by a mail bomb sent by Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, losing partial use of his right hand and vision in one eye; he later became a prominent conservative essayist. Gelernter corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, for six years, and Yale removed him from teaching duties in 2026 after that correspondence surfaced publicly.