The Harvard alumnus who is the FBI's prime suspect in the 17-year Unabomber case left a life in academics to become what people in the rural town of Lincoln, Montana, call a "hermit."

Theodore J. Kaczynski '62, who was an assistant mathematics professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s, is allegedly responsible for at least two murders and a slew of casualties since 1978.

Kaczynski lives outside Lincoln, Mont., in an isolated cabin without running water, electricity or a car.

After he was turned in by his family as a possible suspect, federal agents yesterday prepared to search Kaczynski's house.

Kaczynski's brother, a Washington-based attorney, turned him in to the FBI earlier this year after the family stumbled upon some of Kaczynski's writings in their suburban Chicago home.

The Montana Justice Department yesterday said a closure order, signed by an FBI agent, had been issued for airspace within a five-mile radius of Lincoln.

Lincoln, a peaceful town of roughly 1,500 residents nestled in the middle of the Rocky Mountains and bordering a wilderness area, has been crawling with activity since the news broke. People who work and live in the area say they are shocked that Kaczynski, a man no one really seems to know, is at the center of a riveting federal investigation.

A Quiet and Polite Man

During the summer, Kaczynski rides his bike into town and stops at Garland's Town & Country once or twice a week.

Teresa L. Brown, a Lincoln resident who works as a sales clerk at the store, says she has chatted with Kaczynski. He has bought fishing gear and asks here what bait is likely to work at a particular time of year. He has occaisionally purchased candles, batteries, a flashlight and a bag to carry things back to his cabin.

Brown describes Kaczynski as "a quiet, shy, very polite man" who always came into the store by himself.

"He's just such a nice guy," she says. "It's really surprising if he's the one. He's really the last person you would expect. He's really soft spoken. I just would never expect something like that out of him."

Brown and other people in Lincoln say they don't think Kaczynski is employed or owns a car.

Kaczynski was a mathematics concentrator at Harvard in the 1960s.

"I think he was a pretty good math major. I knew the name, and I knew of him," says Donald P. Ballou '62, a fellow mathematics concentrator.

Kaczynski went on to become an assistant professor at Berkeley, specializing in complex variables.