Respected scientists who were actually terrible people
Scientists: They are much smarter than most people, and they see the world in a different way and ultimately change it ... for better or for worse. Sometimes it's a dice how it's going to go, but science is still moving the world to a new place and it's being driven by some of the strangest people in the world.
Reassured? I did not mean it. Too often we hear about the discoveries and achievements of some of the world's most famous scientists, but we do not hear about other things. Terrible things. Knowledge comes with a price, and some people are not too hesitant to pay it. Do a little digging, and it quickly becomes clear that some of humanity's knowledge has come only because the people who pursue it do not have much in the way of morality, scruples, or the ability to think about twice before plunging headlong into the disgusting. These scientists were terrible people.
1 Erwin Schrodinger was all kinds of bad
Schrodinger is most famous for his cat-in-the-box thought experiment. He was a weird guy, and he was also unforgivable horrible for women (and girls) who had the misfortune to come into his life.
According to a Schrodinger biographer, he kept a series of "little black books" to record the names of the women with whom he had connections and to evaluate each of them. At least three of his mistresses gave him children, and he was helped to develop his famous wave equation by providing "inspiration" as he worked.
They are adults, and that's good, but it's a lot worse. Schrodinger did some tutoring, with students that included 14-year-old twins with I and Ithi Junger. He particularly believed Ithi and was inclined to pet her while they were working on her math class. She was pregnant three years later, and she was sterilized by the botched abortion that followed.
After that, Schrodinger slept with the wife of his assistant, Arthur March. A girl was born from this Union, and while March stepped up to act as the girl's father, his wife moved into Schrodinger's home to be his other wife. They end up heading for Ireland (via the Irish Independent), where he hooked up with married actress Sheila May. She, too, became pregnant, and Schrodinger wrote, "I am the happiest man in Dublin, probably in Ireland, probably in Europe!" no word on how women were happy.
2 John and William Hunter
The brothers John and William Hunter are not the Rock Stars of science, but their work is immeasurably important. William made major discoveries about the lymphatic system and the uterus, while John was an anatomist who developed the idea that organ interactions make people work and lay the foundation for pathology.
Both believed that practical experience was the way to learn, but here is the terrible. Research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (via The Guardian) looked right where William and his partner, the unfortunately named William Smellie, got the bodies they did lectures and dissected. They linked the two anatomists to a series of London murders between 1749 and 1755, and say they were probably responsible for the deaths of between 35 and 40 pregnant women.
Each of the men was connected to a ladle wizard who "purchased" topics for them. William's murder assistance seems to have been his brother, and according to James Lind's library, John also unearthed graves himself before turning to professionals. By the time the brothers were done, they had dissected more than 2,000 bodies, source of some shady manners. Oh, and John? He also initiated the idea of tooth transplants, taking the teeth of the poor and giving them to the rich. Robin Hood, he was not.
3 James D. Watson wanted genetically engineer away the ugly
James D. Watson turned his love of birdwatching into a career in research and genetics, and then he won a Nobel Prize when he discovered the shape of DNA. It's a brilliant job, but there could be more to the story.
According to journalist Ivan Oransky (via Scientific American), there are more than a few people who think his Nobel Prize came only after he took credit for the work of another scientist, Rosalind Franklin. There is no evidence, but it is not the only terrible thing he has credited.
He also went on record as saying genetic engineering should be used to "make all girls pretty," and he spoke freely about his beliefs that there is a connection between race and intelligence. He finally retired in 2007 after giving an interview where he stated that he was "inherently dark on the perspective of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same than ours, "which he disagreed with.
This is the same guy who spoke in 1997, proposing the development of genetic tests to allow a mother to determine if her unborn baby was going to be gay. He added homosexuality should be a reason for abortion, the claimed libido was tied to the skin color, and in 2014 he became the first person to sell his Nobel medallion. Why? Because, says the Smithsonian, he did not like the way the scientific community avoided him.
4 Linus Pauling wanted to tattoo 'unwanted'
Linus Pauling died in 1994, and Oregon State University sang the praises of a man who won two Nobel Prizes (chemistry and peace), who dabbled in theoretical physics, made progress in genetic diseases and immunology, pioneered the idea of molecular disease, and invented a device that made anesthesia safer.
It's just a small part of the long list of achievements that he has credited, and that's all good. But there is a "but" here, and it's a pearl. Pauling's work with molecular disease and genetic disease sent him refitting into the dark, marshy cesspool that is eugenics. Oregon State says Pauling has been a promoter of eliminating diseases such as sickle cell disease (and other hereditary diseases) by first testing for her, and then tattoo bearers with "an obvious mark" on their foreheads. He also said that two carriers should avoid marriage and children, and should consider abandoning any child who might enter the picture, even saying that it would be immoral for a mother to produce a child who will suffer.
Of course, Pauling can speak for himself. During a lecture at Michigan State University, he said (via the state of Oregon), "It's all right for [a mother] to be allowed to determine in how far she will suffer, but she should not be allowed to produce a child who will suffer. It's immoral".
5 Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope let the rivalry get in the way of common sense
Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope were giants in the world of paleontology, brilliant and both determined to write the story of dinosaurs as they saw fit. There was another name here, too, says Slate, and it was Joseph Leidy, the first vertebrate paleontologist in the United States, until the Cope-Marsh feud pushed him away.
Leidy was the first to discover dinosaurs in America, and he was the first to describe a complete skeleton. Marsh and Cope appeared on the scene, and a long-standing grudge, which was destroying science, began when Marsh bribed Pit workers to give him the first crack to newly discovered bones. He went downhill from there, as they all tried to bury the work of each other deeper than the dinosaurs they discovered.
Leidy could not follow the antics of hatred and rage of others, and leave the field. As a poor Hatter's son, he could not compete with the big budgets of Marsh and Cope. Some of this money was paid for explosives and weapons when crew members who worked under their command destroyed fossils instead of leaving them for the competition. The entire saga was filled with stabbing, slander, corruption, and destruction, says UC Berkeley, and unfortunately, that included the destruction of the very dinosaurs they were trying to catalog.
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6 Jack Parsons summoned Satan
Without Jack Parsons-or, as he was born, Marvel Whiteside Parsons-there would be no space shuttle, no spaceflight, and who knows what military conflict would have changed if the United States did not have its developments in rockets and propellant fuel. He was an aeronautical and rocket genius, and he also believed that he had summoned Satan at the age of thirteen.
Parsons was a great devotee of Aleister Crowley, says Gizmodo. He also did a lot of nude dancing in the moonlight. This is not particularly terrible, but what was terrible was his belief that his bizarre sexual rituals of Magick (which he usually undertook with the help of L. Ron Hubbard) would invoke the Antichrist.
Without going into too much detail, the basics are that Parsons and Hubbard performed a series of rituals to embody a goddess named Babalon. Babalon would be the mother of the Antichrist, and they absolutely believed that they had summoned her into the body of Marjorie Cameron. Cameron joined in all the fun room, and she became pregnant. We will never know if it was really the Antichrist, as she had an abortion. There is a small side note, though. After this pursuit, the pastor's wife clung to Hubbard, and they saw the birth of something else: Scientology.
7 John Harvey Kellogg hated everything about human reproduction
Everyone knows John Harvey Kellogg. He is the cereal guy, and he was also a surgeon and a pioneer in the field of nutrition. His profile in the journal of the American College of Surgeons said he was suitable for more than 22,000 surgeries himself and promoted all kinds of foods that he thought were good for people. It's things like peanut butter, yogurt, and soy milk, which makes it pretty much responsible for your breakfast table.
Kellogg has done most of his research on the relationship between nutrition and the soul at the Battle Creek sanatorium (through the Science History Institute). He had a ton of crazy ideas, starting with his belief that tasty food led to frantic fornication. The horizontal tango, he believed, was "against nature" and should absolutely not happen. He even went so far as to suggest the use of crampon tools and acid burns to discourage the hobby, and corn flakes? He invented those to be so bland that they could not awaken any kind of desire in anyone.
Psychology says today that it was just a part of his crazy-he was also one of the founding members of the Foundation's Breed Improvement. He has his own section in the Archives of Eugenics, and his organization has started a register of eugenics to help push the supposed superiority of anyone from the Nordic background. Go ahead and burn those corn flakes now.
8 Alexander Graham Bell hated deaf people
Everyone knows Alexander Graham Bell as an inventor, but inventing was just a side-set. According to PBS, he was really interested in deaf education and the physiology of speech. He even opened a school for the deaf, but that does not mean that he had noble aspirations. Completely the opposite.
Bell was also interested in heredity, and finally came to the conclusion that eugenics was the way to go. He saw an America that was invaded by immigrants and the deaf, and he was not sure he would stand for it. In his 1884 paper "On the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race," he wove a tale of caution about what could happen if the deaf continued to form clubs, socialize, marry, have babies deaf, and communicate in a language they could understand.
He went downhill from there. Rooted in rights says Bell embarked on a quest to remove school sign language, and it absolutely worked. The signature was learned behind closed doors, and deaf students were forced to learn through oral communication. It was so successful that the National Association of the Deaf produced 18 films in the hope of preserving sign language for a time when people were not so irrationally hateful.
One thing that was never mentioned with Bell and his crusade against the deaf was what his mother thought of all that. Eliza Bell was deaf. And his wife, Mabel? Also deaf. At least they did not have to hear his ravings.
9 Marie Curie stole another woman's husband
When we talk about Marie Curie, we talk about her pioneering work in radiation and chemistry. She is often mentioned in the same breath as her husband, Pierre, who was also a brilliant scholar on his own and shared a Nobel Prize with her. What is not mentioned is the fact that she stole another woman's husband, moved in with him, and caused a scandal.
Pierre died in a car accident in 1906, so she was not deceiving him. However, she fell in love with her protégé, a physicist named Paul Langevin. The case began around 1910, when they rented an apartment outside the Sorbonne for their gallant. The problem is that Langevin was married to a woman who had just given birth to her fourth child when he hooked up with Curie.
Curie forced him to divorce his wife and marry her, and their secret did not remain secret for long. We know, says the freelancer, because Langevin's wife found the love letters they had written for each other and published them in a tabloid. The con sequences came quickly. The Swedish Academy of Sciences whispered that it would not be appropriate for her to pick up her Nobel Prize in person because she would have to shake the king's hand and everyone knew where his hands had been. Curie's reputation took a hit that took him years to recover from.
10 William Buckland ate puppies
You may not know William Buckland's name, but everyone has seen the results of his work. Buckland was a nineteenth-century geologist at Oxford University, and he documented the geological phenomenon, wrote articles on fossils and dinosaurs, and made significant progress in mineralogy. He was also part of his life's work to eat anything and everything.
According to Atlas Obscura, one of his favorite dishes was the field mouse on toast, and one of the most disgusting dishes he claimed to have eaten was a meal made of Bluebottle flies. He ate moles, hedgehogs, crocodiles, porpoises, and-worst of all-he was even known to have concocted a few puppies.
He never said why he felt it was necessary to eat puppies, but there are some stories that show how much he was really obsessed. He was in an Italian cathedral when he was shown a stain that would have been a martyr's blood. Always the scientist, he licked it and said it was not blood, it was bald urine. There is another story that when it was presented with the heart of the King of France Louis XIV, he ate that, too.
The latter is only alleged, but we know that he passed his bizarre obsession to his son, Francis. When the boy was a child, his father encouraged him to ride and then eat a turtle. Francis was allowed "as a treat" to help the cook decapitate the turtle. Ahh, childhood.
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