Jean Van Heijenoort, a former secretary, bodyguard and general assistant to Leon Trotsky, died in Mexico City on March 25. He was 73 years old and lived in Palo Alto, Calif.
Mr. Heijenoort was born in Creil, France, on July 23, 1912, and was educated at Lycee St. Louis in Paris. He left school and in 1932 traveled to the Turkish island of Buyuk, then called Prinkipo, where Trotsky, a key figure in the Russian Revolution who had broken with the Soviet leadership, was living in exile.
Mr. Heijenoort became Trotsky's secretary and traveled with him through France and Norway. He left him in Mexico in 1939 and came to the United States. Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City the following year.
Mr. Van Heijenoort became a member of the mathematics department at New York University in the 1950's and taught philosophy and the history of logic at Brandeis University from 1965 to 1977.
He helped to organize the Trotsky Archive at Harvard University, a collection of Trotsky's papers that opened to the public in 1980.
He is survived by a son, Jean Van Heijenoort, and a daughter, Lare Van Heijenoort, both of Paris.