Crowd Facts: An MIT student wrote Newton’s equation for acceleration before jumping out the window to his death.

An MIT student wrote Newton’s equation for acceleration before jumping out the window to his death.

Phillip Gale was a sophomore student at the prestigious school MIT when he decided his life was no longer worth living. His plan to kill himself was fairly methodical and simple. He began with some research, asking fellow students about how he could get onto the roof of the tallest building at MIT: the Green Building.

With his research done, Gale drew a stick figure throwing a chair and wrote out Isaac Newton’s equation on a blackboard. He signed the message with “Phil was here.” He then threw a chair out the window to break it, since the windows were sealed. He jumped out after it. Some people, hearing the crash of the chair first, looked out in time to see Gale fall to his death.

His main reason for killing himself was that he didn’t want to “live in mediocrity” any longer. He was tired of feeling “detached” from the world. He felt like he couldn’t achieve his goals and that he didn’t have a future worth looking forward to. It is truly shocking that someone attending college at a highly competitive university would consider themselves mediocre, and that that mediocrity was worth dying for, but it shows that each mind is a world.

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