Jean Van Heijenoort

Jean van Heijenoort
Mexico 1937; left to right: Jean van Heijenoort, Albert Goldman, Leon Trotsky, Natalia Sedova, Jan Frankel
Born	Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort (1912-07-23)July 23, 1912 Creil, France
Died	March 29, 1986(1986-03-29) (aged 73) Mexico City, Mexico
Alma mater	New York University

Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort (/væn ˈhaɪən.ɔːrt/; French: [van ɛjɛnɔrt]; July 23, 1912 – March 29, 1986) was a pioneer historian of mathematical logic. He was also a personal secretary to Leon Trotsky from 1932 to 1939, and from then until 1947, an American Trotskyist activist.

Van Heijenoort was born in Creil, France. His family's financial circumstances were difficult as his Dutch immigrant father died when van Heijenoort was two. He nevertheless acquired a powerful traditional French formal education, to which his French writings attest. (He also published in Spanish.) Although he eventually became a naturalized American citizen, he visited France twice a year from 1958 until his death, and remained very attached to his French extended family and friends.

In 1932, he joined the Trotskyist movement (recruited by Yvan Craipeau) and the Communist League. Very soon thereafter, the recently exiled Trotsky hired van Heijenoort as a secretary and bodyguard, primarily because of his fluency in French, Russian, German, and English. Thus began seven years in Trotsky's household, during which he served as an all-purpose translator, helping Trotsky write several books and keep up an extensive intellectual and political correspondence in several languages.