What are some examples of scientists who did really good work but then at some point went off the rails and spent (wasted) their time doing essentially crackpot work? I’m most interested in cases where it should have been clear to the person that what they were doing was nuts, even by the knowledge available to them at the time. Some examples:
Isaac Newton produced arguably the most important work in the history of science (the Principia), invented calculus, did major work in optics, then spent his later years trying to find hidden messages in the Bible.
Nicola Tesla invented the AC motor and many other of the basic elements of our AC electrical system, then spent the last half of his life obsessed with wireless transmission of electrical power, something he should have known was impossible.
I would exclude Johannes Kepler from this list. While superficially it seems he made important advances in astronomy (Kepler’s three laws), but wasted time on ideas like the Music of the Spheres and his Platonic solid model of the solar system, astronomy was in such an infant state at that time that one can’t really say he should have known better.
I’d also exclude Kurt Godel. He made important breakthroughs in mathematics and was insane in his later years, but his insanity mostly affected his personal life; he didn’t really do any crackpot work that I’m aware of.
Georg Cantor is borderline. He essentially created the field of transfinite analysis, and then had mental problems in his later years. He spent some time trying to prove that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays, but otherwise didn’t do much crackpot scientific work.
Einstein could potentially fit the bill (although I don’t think anybody would call him mad-as-in-insane). He spent the second half of his life fruitlessly trying to debunk quantum theory.
Edward Teller worked on the Manhattan Project and then spend the rest of his life as a cheerleader for nuclear bombs, trying to create a brand new harbor in Alaska by dropping bombs on it, creating plans for bombing the moon, generally advising the government to build more nukes and use them wherever possible. I believe he tried to talk Johnson or Nixon into nuking Vietnam.
His only regret was never seeing a thermonuclear bomb used on anyone. Oppenheimer said “I have become Death, the Destroyer”, Teller responded “That is so cool!”
William Shockley invented the transistor and then later advocated eugenics. He was also famously difficult to work with, so that eight scientists left his company and created a new one, Fairchild Semiconductor. From that, most of Silicon Valley resulted.
Brian Josephson won a Nobel Prize for discovering the Josephson effect (a quantum thing) and did other groundbreaking work in quantum mechanics. But since then he’s gotten into all kinds of weirdness, like telepathy, telekinesis, homeopathy, and cold fusion. He’s seriously gone off the rails.
Not sure it’s fair to include Tesla on the list. He broke a lot of ground and trying like hell to break more doesn’t seem crackpot so much as possibly misguided with the benefit of hindsight. Also, we do have some forms of wireless power transmission these days, so I don’t agree that it’s impossible.
My entry is Henry Heimlich. Invented the incredibly lifesaving Heimlich Maneuver and Heimlich Chest Drain Valve. But he later went on to advocate the use of the Heimlich Maneuver for many other conditions where it was not proven to be helpful and in many cases was harmful (such as treating drowning victims). Heimlich has also been involved in malariotherapy, which is generally considered to be a terrible idea.
Wilhelm Reich might qualify. The question in his case isn’t whether he went off the rails in his later career but whether he was ever actually on the rails in his early years.
Right: wireless AC transmission works; its just too easy to steal. Also, I wonder about the efficiency. Tesla was socially off the rails, but that doesn’t count.
Regarding Heimlich, at least he kept his sense of humor. I told my parents the following joke after hearing it:
A woman starts choking in a restaurant. A man jumps up from his table, tells people to make room. He bends her over a table, pulls her skirt up and panties down and gives her a big lick where the sun don’t shine. Astonished, she coughs up the bit of chicken.
Everyone gives the man a strange look, and he says, “What? Haven’t you all heard of the hind-lick manoeuvre?”
Well, my parents told friends of theirs who just happened to know Dr. H well enough that they relayed the joke, and they reported that he laughed his ass off.
Dr. Walter Freeman was the first neurologist in Washington, DC and was the head of the neurology department at George Washington University.
Then he decided to go on a barnstorming tour of the US, giving out lobotomies to all comers at $25 a pop.
:eek:
:mad:
Seriously, this was one of the darker moments in medicine, and it happened within living memory. There were a number of guys involved in developing the lobotomy, but Dr. Freeman was really quite mad about it.
Dr. Frederick Seitz did break bad. Very, very bad.
When the tobacco companies were investigated a message from an executive was found were even the executive realized that indeed, madness was involved with the expert for hire they had, it did not matter much to the merchants of doubt:
From a leaked 1989 memo:
“Bill told me that Dr. Seitz is quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice."
I dunno; as soon as one understands the inverse-square law the practicality of broadcast power becomes largely crackpot, at least in the way Tesla was envisioning.
James Watson of double helix fame is another guy who has expressed quite racist views.
Francis Crick later got into studying consciousness, and his views I find incredibly simplistic and useless, but not in the realm of “mad”. Thinking you’ve made an amazing breakthrough when you are decades behind the field isn’t a good sign.
I wasn’t aware of this book, but from reading the Wikipedia page, it sounds to me like he was writing a popular book explaining advances in neuroscience and their implications to the lay public, and not pushing the frontiers of knowledge. Was there something in there that was wrong, or are you complaining that it just wasn’t cutting-edge enough?
William Crookes, the inventor of the Crookes tube, was a firm believer in Spiritualism. Such beliefs were surprisingly common among some very intelligent people in the late 19th century, but Crookes was particularly active in the movement, and undertook studies in which he concluded that the paranormal powers of several mediums were genuine.