mad scientist

mad scientist (plural mad scientists)

1. A bumbling or eccentric scientist working on questionable projects, or a villainous scientist bent on destruction; sometimes, a complex character in whom these archetypes seem to vie for supremacy.
   2. A stock character in fiction who embodies such an archetype.

      Synonyms: Doctor Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein, Dr Frankenstein, Frankenstein, frankenstein, mad professor

      The Nutty Professor franchise explores the light comedic potential of a mad scientist.

      Dr Strangelove explores the darker comedic potential of a mad scientist.

      Her new novel involves a mad scientist, but there's more to it than just bubbling flasks and lightning bolts.

      • 2010, Margaret Atwood, “Of the madness of mad scientists: Jonathan Swift's Grand Academy”, in Bill Bryson, editor, Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society, Mariner Books, →ISBN, page 36:

        The Lagadan projectors [of Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire Gulliver's Travels] were both ridiculous and destructive, but in the middle of the nineteenth century the mad scientist line splits in two, with the ridiculous branch culminating in the Jerry Lewis ‘nutty professor’ comic version, and the other leading in a more tragic direction. Even in ‘alchemist’ tales like the Faustus story, the comic potential was there — Faustus on the stage was a great practical joker — but in darker sagas like Frankenstein this vein is not exploited.

   3. A real-life scientist who is asserted to embody such an archetype.

      The mad scientists at Acme Labs have done it again! [said either approvingly or disparagingly]

      • 1903, William Henry Smith, The History of the State of Indiana from the Earliest Explorations by the French to the Present Time, volume 1, page 501:

        Raffineaque, the eccentric, the "mad scientist," so called, yet one whose work in these later days has been proved to be of true worth, was for a time at the community.

      • 1938, Iowa State University Veterinarian, volumes 1-4, page 25:

        Deacon Jones, sometimes known as the "Mad Scientist," is brushing up on the physiology of mastication.

   5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: a scientist who is insane, power-mad, or similarly deranged.

      In the 1890s, some of the locals viewed the chemical plant as a folly run by mad scientists and venal aristocrats.

      • 1908, Raymond McDonald, The Mad Scientist: A Tale of the Future‎^[1], Cochrane Publishing Company, page 242:

        "She is coming down like a meteor," exclaimed Professor Kaye. "See, she begins to glow!" And so it was. The giant warship Behemoth, released by the forces of Nature, was falling back to earth from a height of 30 or 40 miles, and, acquiring a frightful speed, blazed up with the heat of friction in the atmosphere, like a giant meteor. Yet the world never before saw a meteor like this. As the flaming pirate came nearer, her mass glowed in the heavens like a great red-hot sun—falling, falling, until the flames reached her powder magazine. Then there was an explosion magnificent to witness, as the glowing fragments were hurled with titanic force, spreading them far across the heavens. The red-hot particles glowed like ten thousand little suns, radiating from one center. With apparent slowness the star-like remnants of the Behemoth came to earth, descending and darkening one by one, until the last bright speck had disappeared. Then the round bright moon came out of the shadows of the eclipse, and shed her radiant beams on a world freed forever from the frightful plagues and murderous amusements of the mad scientist.