• Question: where did the steriotypical mad scientist come from?

    Asked by billytheshark to Alex, Ali, Kerry, Philip, Theo on 14 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Alex Pool

      Alex Pool answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      Good question, and I guess it’s due to the mental image of scientists playing around with odd chemicals and explosions.

      But going back it used to be that our understanding of what chemicals were safe and unsafe wasn’t great. So scientists would use chemicals that actually damaged their brains and could make them crazy in later life.

      As another example Marie Curie used to do a lot of research on radiation – but didn’t know how dangerous it was, so she later died due to radiation poisoning (she wasn’t mad though!).

    • Photo: Philip Ratcliffe

      Philip Ratcliffe answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      Well, old Albert Einstein looked a bit funny with his rather wild hair and I suppose stories like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde contributed along with Frankenstein.
      People are also afraid of what we do because they don’t understand it.
      Like when you were little and frightened of the dark, imagining all sorts of nasty monsters under your bed.

    • Photo: Alison Thomson

      Alison Thomson answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      The guys answer’s are great! I’d just like to add that back in the day (a loooooong time ago) scientists wouldn’t always have test subjects, so they would do experiments on themselves!!! I’m pretty sure that lead to quite a few crazy scientists!

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