Radical Science
History contains ample evidence of brilliant but disturbed individuals who worked hard to earn the label “mad scientist.” Deranged sadists like the notorious Nazi Josef Mengele and “father of biological warfare” Shiro Ishii immediately come to mind, but unhinged geniuses also deserve the dubious honor. Among them are Robert J. White, who transplanted dogs’ and monkeys’ heads onto other dogs and monkeys, Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, who perfected artificial insemination and then attempted to use the technique to create human-ape hybrids, Johann Conrad Dippel, who robbed graves in pursuit of proving he could transplant souls, and spymaster Sidney Gottlieb, who pioneered assassination technology and ran the Central Intelligence Agency’s illegal Project MKUltra mind-control experiments. Even the good guys of science are not without quirks. Paracelsus, the “father of toxicology,” believed he could create miniature humans called homunculi from the bodily fluids of living people. Sir Isaac Newton ...