Six Degrees of Separation

Ann Stehney, vice president for planning and research, is closer to Russian anarchy than youmight think.

A book review in the June 14 issue of The Weekly Standard discusses the strange career of Sergei Degaev, who fled to the United States after double-crossing the Russian secret police and the People’s Will, a terrorist group of reformers. He changed his name to Alexander Pell, taught math at the University of South Dakota, then founded its school of engineering (1897-1908). He married Anna Johnson, who, after his death, remarried and went on to teach math at Bryn Mawr College. She died in 1966.

And who should win the Anna Pell-Wheeler award as an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr but our own Ann? She says until she learned of the biography of Degaev by Richard Pipes, she knew nothing about Anna Pell-Wheeler’s husband.