I have Dr. Frankenstein's notes!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hear me out.

In the 19th century a lonely, self-taught (but acknowledged to be accomplished) European scientist, to his own surprise, made a landmark discovery that he believed was a major breakthrough, ranking with two of the three greatest discoveries of all time. It explained many secrets of the universe, and he believed it lay at the basis of Life Itself. He had a fateful encounter at the Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) on the side of Mont Blanc. He stubbornly kept most of this discovery to himself, doubtless afraid that it might be misused or misconstrued…

The scientist was named FRankenstein.

But he wrote up his discovery in a set of notes, which I have unearthed in a library. I now have a copy of them.

This is absolutely true and real. It has nothing to do with Mary Shelley’s novel, or any adaptation of it.

This is the work of Gustavus Frankenstein (1829-1893), who was born Gustavus TRacht in Darmstadt, Germany. His father moved the family to the United States in 1831, changing the family name to “Frankenstein” (and almost certainly unaware of Mary Shelley’s novel, which wasn’t published in the US until 1861. The family probably took the name from Schloss Frankenstein near Darmstadt.) All the children were artists, and the older bother Godfrey gained fame for painting an enormous panorama of Niagara Falls, which he put on exhibition on Broadway. There’s a great YouTube video about it here:

A lot of places will tell you that Gustavus was also a mathematician, and leave it at that. Probably because his works are a.) rare, and hard to get hold of, and b.) written in extremely obscure and vague language, so, even if you do get hold of them, it’s not much help.

I’ve been digging out copies of his books and articles in an effort to figure out what the hell he was up to. AND NOW I HAVE HIS NOTES.

I’m tempted to bind them in a black binding with How I Did It on the cover. I want to clear out part of my cellar for my evil laboratory, and place “Help Wanted” ads for a diminutive assistant. (“Needn’t be a hunchback, but it would help if you could be obsequious and cackle maniacally and be like Dwight Frye or Marty Feldman or Kevin O’Connor. Or, in a pinch, Bernard Jukes.”)

For what it’s worth, I’ve been able to dope much of it out from the sources I already have. In a nutshell, he was an accomplished alegraic manipulator and creator of Magic Squareees and Cubes, and he did come up with some clever geometric constructions which show analogies to squares and cubes. But they’re not as significant as he thought they were, his “theory” consists of four parts which really aren’t connected at all, and he (and his followers – like Trump, he impressed a lot of people. Non-mathematicians all) inflated its significance beyond all reasonable bounds. It’s significant that none of the famous people he invited (Like Peter Cooper) came to the lecture he gave in New York City.

I’m going to try to get a couple of articles and a story out of it.

2

I can possibly confirm this.

Indiana University has a copy of a book that sounds identical to the above. Forty years ago, at least, they did, located at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis (supposedly kept as a historical pictoral reference for anatomy).

3

That sounds very interesting. I’d be interested to learn more.

4

Sad to say, it doesn’t show up on the IU library catalog online. I remember the book, but as I said, that was four decades ago.

5

Well, thanks for the heads-up. I can contact the library and ask about it.

I read through the notes last night, and it actually does explain a procedure that was obscure in his lectures and books. And , in what appears to be an excerpt from a letter, he actually asks the recipient not to publish or explain his work! He was deliberately keeping his procedures obscure, just like the fictional Frankentein. Unlike Victor, though, he hoped to be lauded for his discoveries. Ya can’t have it both ways, though. If you want to be noted for a discovery you have to tell how you did it. They don’t give patents for undisclosed inventions.

6

So he was the 19th century version of the Time Cube guy?

7

It’s pronounced “Fronkensteen.”

8

I hadn’t heard about the Time Cube guy. I assume this is what you mean:

Gustavus actually knew some math, won prizes for solving mathematical puzzles (on the level of Lewis Carroll’s “Pillow Problems”). and said that he taight himself differential calculus in a week. As I say, he did come up with a clever mathematical analogy. So a lot of his stuff was For Real. I just don’t think it was as groundbreaking or significant as he did. And when he started philosophizing about anything other than math he quickly disappeared off The Deep End.

9

FWIW, there was (is?) a German noble family that carried the name “von und zu Franckenstein” (note the “c” before the “k”) where von und zu means that they lived on their inherited lands. No idea if that influenced Mary Shelly at all, but I want to believe that it influenced Mel Brooks’ casting of their late scion Clement in a minor role in Young Frankenstein.