I propose Wilhelm Reich as an interesting cross between mad scientist and complete kook. Besides the whole pseudo-science angle, you have government conspiracy and persecution (they burned his books!), pop culture references (Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting), sex and cool gadgets.
Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele definitely fits the profile of a mad scientist. He performed all kinds of bizarre experiments on helpless Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz, especially twins. Castration, limbs removed sans anesthetic, injection with diseases to see how long it would take for the subject to die… nothing was too gruesome for ol’ Joe.
Bastard died, free as a bird, in Brazil in 1979 in a drowning accident. There is no justice in this world.
May I humbly suggest Fred McMurray, aka ‘The Nutty Professor’?
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One of the possibly mad professors here in Cambridge is Brian Josephson, Nobel Prize winner and promotor of ESP, cold fusion, parapsycology etc.
his website http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/
First, some comments on previous posts:
As has already been suggested, it is fairer to say Tesla was eccentric rather than crazy. Among other peculiarities he had a violent aversion to the sight of pearls, and had a fetish of sorts about multiples of three–for instance, his apartment or hotel room number always had to be one which was evenly divisible by three. His first name was Nikola, rather than Nicholas.
I read once that the scientist in the first of the Superman cartoons produced by Max Fleishcher, a megalomaniac who threatens Metropolis with a ray weapon, was supposed to have been suggested by Tesla. They do not bear a physical resemblance. If the cartoonists did have Tesla in mind, it may be because Tesla had offered to build a death ray for the U.S. during World War I.
He also discussed the possibility of splitting the Earth in two using harmonic vibrations. He wasn’t proposing that anyone should try it, but remarks of this kind contributed to his “mad scientist” image.
John Whiteside Parsons, a pioneer in the development of rocket fuel, was a devoted student of Aliester Crowley. He once issued a manifesto in which he declared himself to be The AntiChrist. In the late 1940s he undertook an elaborate series of rituals he called The Babalon Working which was supposed to bring about the mortal incarnation of a goddess. According to historians and biographers who are not Scientologists, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was Parsons’ assistant in this effort. The Church of Scientology has an alternate version in which Hubbard infiltrated and put an end to black magic in America.
When Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel it was probably not over a woman. It is not clear what the duel had been about, although contemporary sources refer to it having been about mathematics. Cecil Adams did a column about this. He says it was over some issue in mathematics. Ricky Jay, in Jay’s Journal of Anomalies, says the duel came about because a rival mathematician was “offended” by a principal Brahe had proposed. Other sources say the argument was over who was the greater mathematician.
The nose is said to have been made of gold and silver and was attached by some kind of salve or glue. It is said that it was made to look like a real nose, and it does not strike me as crazy that Brahe would have opted to where the best prosthetic device available at the time.
On the other hand, Adams reports he kept an elk as a pet. Other sources say it was a moose. In any event, it had to be killed after it broke a leg while walking down stairs when it was drunk.
A scientist who has yet to be named is J. Gilbert Wright. From what little I know of him, he appears to have been kind of cracked, but benign. He is best remembered as the inventor of Silly Putty. Wright was an ardent Spiritualist and believed that he had contacted the spirit of Thomas Edison. He worked for decades on perfecting a radio-type device for communicating with the dead, the prototype having been developed by Edison, and he claimed Edison had given him suggestions on improving the device from beyond. Wright died in 1959, and the machine has not been seen since.
While I’m a little on-the-fence about the whole “Rational Suicide” movement, I’ll concede that there are good arguments to be made for it. Kevorkian, though, is not the man to make them. Before you canonize the guy for his compassion towards the dying, you might want to look at som of his oil paintings on the subject:
http://www.fansoffieger.com/kevoart.htm
(As damning as the evidence of this site is, astoundingly enough, it was put up by Kevorkian’s admirer!)
Does it count if the idea is mad, even if the people working on it are sane? I offer you Project Orion, a Cold War attempt to make a low-flying aircraft powered by nuclear explosions pushing it from behind. It would have flown over the USSR, spraying radioactive debris in retaliation for the deaths of the people who could no longer send conventional missiles. The engine was actually tested, but sanity prevailed before flight testing could begin - where would you do it?
You can keep your death rays and black holes and other pulp-sf stuff. This shit was real, and there were other Weapons of Universal Destruction being worked on during the Cold War on both sides. I’ll vote for whoever it was that thought Orion up, and score assists for everyone else who kept the program alive as long as they did.
On the subject of Brahe’s nose, there’s a relevant item in the fascinating new temporary exhibition “Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome” that’s just opened at the British Museum. The subject was the Victorian pharmaceutical baron, best remembered as the founder of the Wellcome Trust and Library, but who also acquired probably the finest collection on the history of medicine ever assembled. The collection was broken up after his death, so the exhibition brings together a sampling of its riches.
The connection with Brahe’s nose is that one of the items on display (A641030, from the Science Museum’s holdings) is an ivory false nose, described as 17th-18th century. The exhibition doesn’t mention Brahe, but does note that in centuries past, with their incidence of syphilis and sword injuries, such items were relatively common prostheses. It’s reproduced in the catalogue (p242) alongside a similar nose made from plated metal. Neither has any attachments for straps or ribbons and so they were presumably used in conjunction with some sort of adhesive. The ivory one is sufficiently close to a pale skin tone that it might pass a casual look, for example amongst passers-by in the street.
It seems plausible that these examples are very close to what Brahe’s false nose would have looked like.