mad scientist

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English

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A stereotypical evil mad scientist.

Noun

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mad scientist (plural mad scientists)

  1. A stock character in popular fiction; a bumbling scientist working on unlikely ways to save the world, or a villainous one bent on destroying it.
    Synonyms: Doctor Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein, Dr Frankenstein, Frankenstein, frankenstein, mad professor
    • 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.

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