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25 Real-Life Mad Scientists

Posted by Juan Ramos , Updated on June 24, 2024

Researchers often called “mad” are known for their big dreams and odd habits. But this doesn’t mean they want to harm anyone. Many have made amazing discoveries that help us a lot. One thing they all share is the **bravery to push limits**, sometimes even bending ethical or moral rules.

Here is the list of the 25 real-life mad scientists.

Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (1887-1961) was an Austrian physicist, later naturalized Irish, whose work in quantum theory yielded important results.

Schrödinger came up with a wave equation that allows scientists to calculate the wave function of a system. The form of the wave functions rules the movement of small particles, and what physicists now call the Schrödinger equation allows them to specify how these wave functions (also known as probability waves) are modified by external influences.

Sir Henry Head (1861-1940) was an English neurologist and fellow of the Royal Society of London.

Head’s claim to fame is his groundbreaking work on the sensory nerves and the network of neural structures in the brain and the rest of the body known as the somatosensory system.

The somatosensory system is what causes the perception of touch (known as haptic perception), pain, body position or proprioception, and body temperature or thermoception.

For his experiments, Sir Henry Head worked with the psychiatrist William Halse Rivers Rivers.

But what makes Dr. Head are real-life mad scientist is that he often used his own body to conduct his neurological work.

Two disorders are named after him: the Head-Holmes syndrome and the Head-Riddoch syndrome.

Michael Persinger

Michael A. Persinger (1945-2018) was an American Canadian psychologist and professor. From 1971 until the time of his death in 2018 at the age of 73, Michael Persinger was a professor of psychology at the Laurentian University of Sudbury in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Persinger chose an unusual research area, that of parapsychological phenomena. He hypothesized that there is a connection between our brains’ temporal lobes and mystical experiences. Through his work, Persinger sought to find scientific explanations for paranormal abilities such as clairvoyance and telepathy.

Giovanni Aldini

Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834) was an Italian physician from Bologna, the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

Aldini is famous for his work on galvanism, or the generation of electric current by chemical action. He worked on constructing lighthouses, and some of his experiments aimed at preserving human life during fires.

Aldini’s work became internationally famous because apart from his native Italian and Latin, he also wrote in English and French.

A remarkable fact about this mad scientist is that he was a significant inspiration for Mary Shelley when she wrote her masterpiece Frankenstein.

Charles Guthrie

Coming at number 21, there is another psychologist. In this case, the American Charles Claude Guthrie (1880-1963), whose work on pharmacology and physiology garnered prestige.

However, Professor Guthrie was controversial for his experiments involving head transplants in humans. This could have even prevented him from winning the Nobel Prize .

Albert Bandura

The Canadian American psychologist Albert Bandura (1925-2021) was a professor of psychology at the prestigious Stanford University in California.

Professor Bandura’s scientific contributions include personality psychology, social cognitive theory , and therapy.

His most famous experiment is the so-called Bobo doll experiment that he carried out for the first time in 1961. This was a series of experiments to study children’s behavior by having minors watch an adult behaving aggressively against a round-bottomed toy known as a Bobo doll.

Bandura’s work suggests that people learn how to behave socially as children through observing, imitating, and then modeling the behavior of adults.

Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was an Austrian Doctor of Medicine and psychoanalyst. He was born in the Kingdom of Galicia, now part of Ukraine but then part of Austria-Hungary.

Reich belongs to the second generation of psychoanalysts following the steps of his fellow Austrian Sigmund Freud.

Today, Reich was one of the most radical figures in his field, and he was the author of several influential books such as The Function of the Orgasm (1927) and The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933).

After living in Europe for most of his life, Reich accepted a job at the New School of Social Research in New York in 1939.

In the US, Reich became notorious for building orgone accumulators to store life energy.

He would die in 1957 of heart failure in a US prison where he was serving a two-year sentence for violating an injunction from the US Food and Drug Administration against the shipment of orgone accumulators.

Carney Landis

Carney Landis was a graduate student at Minnesota University who in 1924, conducted what many consider an unethical experiment designed to test the links between different emotions and facial expressions .

Does a person’s face change according to their emotion at a given time? Does being afraid , in shock, or disgusted trigger specific facial expressions? And are those facial expressions universal?

What made Carny Landis’s experiment problematic was the method he used to obtain evidence by subjecting volunteers to the sight of shocking images, having them touch live electric wires, and, worse, more disturbing tests.

Hwang Woo-Suk

Hwang Woo-suk is a South Korean veterinarian born in 1953. Considered one of the most innovative scientists in stem cell research, he became controversial for his claims that he had successfully created a human clone.

Although those claims were made in 2004 and 2005, he was not dismissed as a professor from Seoul National University until 2006, but for a completely different reason. He was booted for faking research.

Hwang Woo-suk has also admitted to committing ethical violations in his stem cell research after accusations that he had used eggs from his female students and others obtained from the black market.

Sergei Brukhonenko

Sergei Sergeevich Brukhonenko (1860-1960) was a Soviet scientist whose research was crucial in heart surgery.

Brukhonenko worked at the famous Research Institute of Experimental Surgery in Moscow.

During the Stalinist era (1927-1953), his work contributed to developing open-heart surgery in the Soviet Union . The first open-heart procedure in Russia was successfully performed in 1957 by Brukhonenko’s colleague Alexander Vishnevsky.

Louis Jolyon West

An American psychiatrist, Louis Jolyon West (1924-1999) started his career as a professor of psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma.

His most influential research includes the areas of brainwashing techniques, drug abuse, and how cults work. He was also a high-profile anti-death penalty activist.

Sidney Gottlieb

Sidney Gottlieb (1918-1999) was an American chemist who became infamous for his work as head of the so-called Project MKUltra at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

This illegal project, which ran between 1953 and 1973, focused on mind control and assassination attempts . It conducted experiments involving drugs, brainwashing, and other methods of psychological torture to force confessions from individuals.

Max Pettenkofer

Joseph Pettenkofer (1818-1901), later known as Max Joseph von Pettenkofer was a chemist and hygienist from Bavaria.

His work contributed to the creation of sewage disposal as we now know it. Believe it or not, before Pettenkofer’s scientific work, the beneficial effects of fresh air and clean water were not widely known, at least not in the Western world.

Robert White

Coming at number 12 is Robert White (1926-2010), an American neurosurgeon from Minnesota whose craziest experiments involved transplanting heads of living apes.

J.B.S Haldane

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1862-1964) was a British-Indian scientist known for his work in genetics and other areas.

Haldane renounced his British citizenship in 1961 to become a citizen of India due to his Marxist ideas. He is best remembered for coining the term “clone” and its derivates.

José Delgado

We begin our top 10 mad scientists with José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado (1915-2011), better known as José Delgado.

Originally from Málaga, Spain, Delgado was a professor of neurophysiology at Yale University for many years before relocating to Madrid. There, he created a medical school in 1975. Delgado would spend the rest of his life in his native country .

Delgado’s research on mind control, for which he used electrical stimulation, places him on our list. He conducted his experiments on monkeys and human beings.

Duncan MacDougall

The Scottish scientist Duncan MacDougall (1866-1920) was the creator of the 21 grams experiment whose results were published in 1907 when MacDougall lived in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

MacDougall hypothesized that the human soul has a weight, of precisely 21.3 grams.

His experiments have fed the imagination not only of other scientists but also artists. The most famous reference to his work in popular culture is the 2003 Hollywood movie 21 Grams, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro.

William Buckland

The English theologian, geologist, and paleontologist William Buckland (1784-1856) was the first person in history to write a full account of a fossilized dinosaur, which he found in Kirkdale Cave in the English county of North Yorkshire.

Buckland called the dinosaur he had found Megalosaurus.

Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916-2004) was an English scientist.

His work as a molecular biologist allowed him to play a role in deciphering the double helix that is the structure of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).

Stubbins Ffirth

We owed the American doctor Stubbins Ffirth (1784-1820) the causes of yellow fever, a viral disease he believed not to have been contagious.

Ffirth was wrong in thinking that heat was the cause of yellow fever, but his research helped advance scientific understanding of the disease until the real reason (mosquito bites) was discovered by a Cuban scientist named Carlos Finlay.

Robert G. Heath

According to the American psychiatrist Robert Galbraith Heath (1915-1999), mental illnesses were the result of physical defects. Therefore, he thought that mental illnesses could be cured by treating the body.

If that wasn’t enough to class him as a “mad scientist”, Robert G. Heath is infamous for his work on so-called sexual orientation conversion. Heath claimed to have converted homosexual men into heterosexuals.

Heath’s work is now discredited by scientists.

Ilya Ivanov

Russian scientist Ilya Ivanov (1870-1932) is one of the best-known biologists from Soviet times.

Ivanov mostly worked in artificial insemination, and he is included in this list for his attempts to inseminate female chimpanzees with human sperm to create a human-ape hybrid. Luckily, the experiment failed, and no pregnancy resulted.

Jack Parsons

One of the most influential scientists in the history of the US space program is undoubtedly the American rocket engineer John Whiteside Parsons (1914-1952).

But what makes Parsons controversial is his taste for occultism and belief in the supernatural. He even conducted rituals to invoke mythical goddesses.

His life was short. Parsons died at 37 from an explosion at his home laboratory.

As long as there has been science, there have also been mad scientists. And to prove it, we have placed Theophrastus von Hohenheim (c. 1493-1541) at number 2.

Better known as Paracelsus, this Swiss physician was a true Renaissance man and an innovator.

Paracelsus is responsible for many of the medical advances of his time and is often nicknamed the father of toxicology.

Being also a philosopher, an alchemist, and a theologian, Paracelsus may not fit our contemporary idea of a scientist. Still, his contributions to different scientific fields, such as chemistry and toxicology, have been vital in the further development of these disciplines.

Nikola Tesla

Coming at number 1 is the Serbian American inventor whose name has been popularized by a well-known automotive company.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) whose futuristic vision and hard work in mechanical and electrical engineering have left an indelible mark on science .

Tesla emigrated to the United States in 1884, becoming an American citizen a few years later in 1891.

Tesla’s most famous invention is a coil that can transmit electricity wirelessly. This is now known as the Tesla coil.

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10 Mad Scientists in History

The line between crazy and genius is thin, and in science, many examples of people blurring that line exist. While scientists start their experiments hoping to make striking discoveries, they can go downright apish when they don’t make a discovery. Some sacrifice their subjects while others borderline torture their volunteers. This list presents ten mad scientists in history, detailing the ambitious pursuits that led to their fame or infamy.

Related: 10 Crazy Scientific Theories That Used To Be Accepted As True

10 Paracelsus (1493–1541)

Ever wondered how you could create a man? Paracelsus was a botanist who thought there was a teeny-tiny yet fully formed human inside every sperm. He even had a 40-day recipe to prove his idea, complete with instructions to make this venture successful.

While the idea sounds preposterous in a world that has made immense discoveries in biology, Paracelsus’s idea was not as strange in his time. As a scientist from the 16th century, Paracelsus advanced the theory of preformation—which believed that organisms grew from small versions of themselves. In his instructions on creating life, Paracelsus even described how the sperm held the key to life. For the scientist, a creator only required the right incubation to develop a new human.

If you’re keen on trying out Paracelsus’s 40-day recipe on how to build a human, you’ll need a warm incubation device and human blood. But if you succeed, you’ll be the first because even Paracelsus couldn’t pull it off.

9 Josef Mengele (1911–1979)

War is tough, but what’s harder is what it reveals about the human condition: inhumanity. Joseph Mengele was a brilliant scientist whose power and influence during the Nazi era earned him an infamous reputation as the “Angel of Death.”

As a scientist assigned to the Auschwitz camps during the Second World War, Mengele performed bizarre experiments with human subjects. Some core interests of the mad scientist bordered on examining connections between twins, eye pigmentation, and persons with disabilities. The insane reality of his experiments is that he forcefully used live prisoners as guinea pigs for his experiments.

Modern scientists are horrified by the lengths that Josef Mengele went to as he attempted to study human biology. Sadly, after all his trials, they didn’t amount to anything besides shedding light on the horrors of Hitler’s reign.

8 Giovanni Aldini (1762–1834)

As far as celebrity scientists go, Giovanni Aldini was a rockstar with global fame. At a time when electricity was still a new invention, Aldini traveled across Europe with the sole purpose of electrifying subjects. This may sound horrific, and it was, but it was all in pursuit of science.

In his travels, Aldini became an entertainer who gave audiences the rare spectacle of witnessing what happens when corpses are electrocuted. In a demonstration, Aldini would attach electric nodes to observe how the body reacts. When attached to a human or ox head, the facial muscles would contort, teeth would chatter, and even eye sockets would pop out. Where the body was involved, the limbs and parts moved in motion, giving the impression that the organism was suffering or reanimating.

Yet, besides his antics, Aldini was one of the few scientists who managed to cure mentally ill patients with shocks to the brain. His curious and interesting experiments indicated the power of electricity in science.

7 William Buckland (1784–1856)

William Buckland is as mad a scientist as they come. On the one hand, he was the brilliant scientist who walked beside Charles Darwin and was the first man to describe the fossilized dinosaur, the Megalosaurus. For the English intelli-vore, science had so much to teach, and he was willing to learn and, at other times, taste it. Yes, he’s also famous as the man who could eat anything.

Besides his active pursuit of science, Buckland scoops the award for the man with a diverse palate, devouring anything from puppy, panther, and kangaroo and to sea slugs. According to his records, the most unpalatable things he ever tasted were the mole and bluebottle fly that wouldn’t just sit right with his taste buds. But, while eating every being that walks on Earth is impressive, Buckland didn’t stop there.

One famous story about Buckland is that he was once a guest at a fancy dinner where the mummified heart of Louis XI was on display. As a piece of the precious relic was passed for the guests to observe, Buckland decided to add it to his long list of culinary accomplishments. He became the mad scientist that ate the heart of a king. This is not a bragging point most scientists can claim. Nor one I would want to add to my resume.

6 Sidney Gottlieb (1918–1999)

Sidney Gottlieb is a mad scientist, by all accounts, one responsible for the CIA’s quest for mind control. As a chemist for the USA’s CIA, Gottlieb participated in some of the darkest experiments in recent history. In the 1950s and ’60s, Gottlieb was the mind behind MKUltra—a mind control program.

Some of Gottlieb’s most infamous experiments involved the use of cocaine, THC, heroin, and LSD. Gottlieb’s ruse for continuing his projects was the justification that it would help in the discovery of truth serum. However, despite all his pursuits, the LSD and other components didn’t aid interrogations but instead hindered them.

Gottlieb’s work on Project MKUltra is frowned upon, mostly because the scientist experimented on both knowing and unknowing Americans. As far as mad scientists with unquenchable power go, Gottlieb is one of the maddest.

5 Carney Landis (1897–1962)

Carney Landis was a psychology graduate at the University of Minnesota who decided to study human emotions. In his experiment, Landis hoped to spot commonalities between human reactions to various triggers.

What made Landis a mad scientist, and what led many to call him an unethical psychologist, was how he executed his experiment. In the experiment, Landis took pictures of his fellow students as they performed various acts; the more bizarre, the better. Some activities included smelling ammonia and sticking hands in buckets filled with the slimiest frogs and electric shock wires. While these instances are weird, they’re still tolerable.

The act that sent everyone through the roof was the forced decapitation of a live rat. Participants that refused to do it on their own were still captured watching Landis do it himself as he recorded their reactions. Almost all participants experienced trauma and confusion after the experiments, whose outcomes were not as convincing. The only saving grace in this story is that Landis never massacred another rodent as he went along to practice sexual psychopathology.

4 Johann Conrad Dippel (1673–1734)

Johann Conrad Dippel was your everyday scientist back when alchemy was the thing. Alchemists were practically scientists who dedicated their lives to discovering elixirs by manipulating all kinds of metals. Like his peers, Dippel was a notorious resident of Castle Frankenstein, a hilltop castle that was the stuff of myth and legend.

As the official alchemist at Castle Frankenstein, Dippel experimented with everything. The most peculiar ingredients for his elixirs included leather, ivory, blood, and horns stripped from human cadavers. While the authenticity of his elixirs was never confirmed, Dippel claimed to have found a one-all cure for all ails, from epilepsy to common colds.

But when he wasn’t solving society’s ills, the scientist was obsessed with soul transplants. Yes, corpses and grave robbers were involved. All is fair in love and science, right? Dippel had the brilliant idea that one could transfer a soul from one corpse to another using lubricant, a hose, and a funnel! Naturally, Dippel’s pursuits inspired the Frankenstein monster stories, but that’s a tale for another day.

3 Jose Delgado (1915–2011)

Jose Manuel Delgado is one of the most brilliant scientists in recent history. Before Delgado, many before him had toyed with the idea that electricity could manipulate the brain. Identifying the promise in the idea, Delgado took it to the next level, successfully controlling animals and humans with electrodes.

In what seems like a product of science fiction minds, Delgado successfully developed technologies that manipulated the mind electrically using a brain chip. Like the movies, Delgado stimulated the neural tissues of monkeys, controlling them with nothing but remote control. Gradually, the mad scientist perfected the technology and used it on a bull. The experiment was incredible since he was able to stop the bull right before it charged straight for him!

The experiments were so advanced that at least 20 humans were involved in his experiments. Envisioning the success of his technology, Delgado even bragged that generals and their armies would soon be controlled remotely through electric brain stimulation. He was truly ahead of his time, or maybe that’s just the electrode implants speaking.

2 Robert Knox (1791–1862)

Anatomy was one of the most prestigious pursuits for scientists of the 19th century. In this market, Robert Knox was a legend, a true pioneer of comparative anatomy who also doubled as a lecturer. Sadly, like all mad scientists, Knox went to some depths that destroyed his stellar reputation.

Since anatomy requires one major component, bodies, Knox relied on two suppliers. At the time, demand outweighed supply, and the two gentlemen, Burke and Hare, resorted to killing people and supplying them to Knox. Gradually, the law caught up with the gentlemen after their exploits were too successful. Investigations revealed that they were responsible for a 16-person killing spree where Knox was indirectly implicated alongside the crooked body snatchers.

The accepted “ask no question” practice toward cadavers bit Knox, whose reputation took a huge hit. The incident was so grand that from the media frenzy, the authorities came up with the Anatomy Act of 1832. The pursuit of cadavers truly killed Robert Knox’s career.

1 Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov (1870–1932)

In science, there’s nothing like too far, and Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov subscribed to this creed. Ivanov created the strangest and creepiest hybrids as a Russian specialist in interspecific hybridization and artificial insemination. To carry out his unholy experiments, Ivanov even traveled to Guinea, West Africa, where he hoped to cross-breed humans and apes.

When Russia sought worldwide dominion, the state saw Ivanov’s experiments as key to discovering super-strong hairy warriors. Backed with financial and political support, Ivanov set out on the secret mission that collapsed soon after. Fortunately, Ivanov found it impossible to create a hybrid between humans and our ape relatives.

Yet, despite the failures of his ape-human project, Ivanov was successful in other ventures. He created a zeedonk (zebra-donkey hybrid), a zubron (bison-cow hybrid), a guinea-pig rabbit, an antelope-cow, and even a mouse-rat. These bizarre incarnations made him a legend within scientific circles, but he never could overcome the negative publicity from the ape-human trials. As far as experiments go, we’re sure glad some failed.

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34 Facts About Mad Scientists

Written by Glynnis Cordero

Modified & Updated: 20 Sep 2024

• Science Facts

Mad scientists have always captured our imagination, blending genius with a touch of insanity. But what makes these characters so intriguing? Mad scientists often push the boundaries of science, ethics, and sometimes reality itself. From literature to movies, they challenge norms and explore the unknown, often with unpredictable results. Think of Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll—brilliant minds whose experiments led to unexpected consequences. These figures remind us of the thin line between brilliance and madness. Mad scientists are not just fictional; history has its share of real-life geniuses who walked a similar path. Ready to dive into the world of eccentric inventors, groundbreaking discoveries , and the occasional ethical dilemma? Let's explore 34 fascinating facts about mad scientists that will leave you questioning the limits of human ingenuity.

Key Takeaways:

• Mad scientists, both real and fictional, have left a lasting impact on history and pop culture with their eccentric behavior and groundbreaking experiments, sparking ethical debates and captivating audiences worldwide.
• From Nikola Tesla's death ray to Dr. Frankenstein's monster, mad scientists have pushed the boundaries of science and technology, blurring the line between genius and insanity, and leaving an indelible mark on literature, movies, and real-life ethical dilemmas.

Mad Scientists in History

Mad scientists have always fascinated people. Their eccentricity, brilliance, and sometimes dangerous experiments make them intriguing figures. Here are some mind-blowing facts about these enigmatic individuals.

Nikola Tesla was known for his eccentric behavior. He claimed to have invented a death ray and had a strange obsession with pigeons.

Isaac Newton once inserted a needle into his eye socket to study optics. He was also known for his alchemical experiments.

Robert Oppenheimer , the father of the atomic bomb, quoted the Bhagavad Gita saying, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," after the first successful test.

Thomas Edison conducted over 1,000 failed experiments before inventing the light bulb. His relentless pursuit of innovation earned him the title of a mad scientist.

Fictional Mad Scientists

Fictional mad scientists have captivated audiences in books, movies, and TV shows. Their wild experiments and larger-than-life personalities make them unforgettable.

Dr. Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's novel created a monster from body parts, bringing it to life with electricity.

Dr. Jekyll from Robert Louis Stevenson's story transformed into the evil Mr. Hyde after drinking a potion.

Dr. Emmett Brown from "Back to the Future" invented a time-traveling DeLorean, changing the course of history.

Dr. Moreau from H.G. Wells' novel conducted experiments to turn animals into humans on a remote island.

Real-Life Experiments

Mad scientists often conducted bizarre and groundbreaking experiments. Some of these experiments changed the world, while others were just plain strange.

Vladimir Demikhov transplanted the heads of dogs, creating two-headed canines in the 1950s.

Josef Mengele , a Nazi doctor, performed horrific experiments on concentration camp prisoners during World War II.

Sergei Brukhonenko developed a primitive heart-lung machine and kept a dog's head alive for several hours.

Giovanni Aldini used electricity to make dead bodies twitch and move, inspiring Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."

Mad Scientists in Pop Culture

Mad scientists have left an indelible mark on pop culture. Their influence can be seen in various forms of media, from comics to video games.

Dr. Octopus from Spider-Man is a brilliant scientist turned villain with mechanical tentacles.

Rick Sanchez from "Rick and Morty" is a genius inventor with a reckless disregard for safety and morality.

Dr. Nefarious from the "Ratchet & Clank" video game series is a robotic mad scientist bent on galactic domination.

Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz from "Phineas and Ferb" creates elaborate inventions to take over the Tri-State Area.

Ethical Dilemmas

Mad scientists often push the boundaries of ethics in their quest for knowledge. Their controversial experiments raise important questions about morality and responsibility.

He Jiankui created the first genetically edited babies, sparking a global ethical debate.

Shiro Ishii led Unit 731, conducting brutal experiments on prisoners during World War II.

Harry Harlow studied maternal deprivation in monkeys, causing severe psychological harm to his subjects.

Andrew Wakefield falsely linked vaccines to autism, leading to a decline in vaccination rates and outbreaks of preventable diseases.

Women Mad Scientists

While often overshadowed by their male counterparts, women have also made significant contributions to the world of mad science.

Marie Curie conducted pioneering research on radioactivity, winning two Nobel Prizes.

Rosalind Franklin played a crucial role in discovering the structure of DNA, though her contributions were initially overlooked.

Ada Lovelace is considered the first computer programmer, envisioning the potential of computers long before they existed.

Lise Meitner helped discover nuclear fission, though her male colleague received most of the credit.

Mad Scientists in Literature

Literature has given us some of the most memorable mad scientists, whose stories continue to captivate readers.

Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is obsessed with creating life, leading to tragic consequences.

Dr. Moreau from H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau" conducts grotesque experiments on animals.

Dr. Jekyll from Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" explores the duality of human nature.

Griffin from H.G. Wells' "The Invisible Man" becomes invisible but descends into madness and violence.

Modern-Day Mad Scientists

Today's mad scientists continue to push the boundaries of science and technology, often blurring the line between genius and insanity.

Elon Musk is known for his ambitious projects, including SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink, which aims to connect human brains to computers.

Craig Venter created the first synthetic life form, sparking debates about the future of biotechnology.

George Church is working on de-extincting the woolly mammoth and editing human genes to prevent diseases.

Aubrey de Grey is researching ways to extend human lifespan, aiming to make aging a thing of the past.

Mad Scientists in Movies

Movies have brought mad scientists to life on the big screen, thrilling audiences with their wild experiments and unpredictable behavior.

Dr. Strangelove from Stanley Kubrick's film is a former Nazi scientist with a bizarre personality and a plan for nuclear war.

Dr. Henry Wu from "Jurassic Park" is responsible for creating genetically engineered dinosaurs, leading to chaos and disaster.

The Madness of Science

Mad scientists have always fascinated us. Their wild ideas and daring experiments push the boundaries of what's possible. From Frankenstein's monster to real-life inventors like Nikola Tesla , these figures blend genius with a touch of insanity . They remind us that innovation often comes from thinking outside the box, even if it means breaking a few rules.

Their stories, whether fictional or real, show the thin line between brilliance and madness. They challenge our understanding of ethics and morality in science. While some of their experiments might seem outlandish, they often pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries.

So, next time you hear about a mad scientist, remember that their eccentricity might just be the spark needed for the next big breakthrough. Embrace the madness, because sometimes, it's the only way to change the world.

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Mad Scientists Who Changed the World

The doctor who infected a child. The mathematician who founded a cult. The psychologist who breached the boundaries of morality. The mad inventor with myths tied to his name and another who lost his sanity fighting the establishment. Let’s get to know some of the scientists who did not follow the crowds.

Science is first and foremost a method - a meticulous way to expose reality layer by layer while formulatng, testing and modifying hypotheses. Every scientist will tell you that the bulk of their time is dedicated to hard work and that even that romantic spark of free, wild, groundbreaking thinking one imagines while thinking about science are based upon methodical work of many generations of researchers and on many long days of trial and error in the laboratory, at the computer or on a sheet of paper. 

Nevertheless, the popular image of science is different. We often think of a scientist as a rather eccentric, disorganized, brilliant and half-crazy person. We encounter these mad scientists again and again in popular culture - in the monster that Victor Frankinstein built from parts of cadavres, in Doc Brown’s time machine in “Back to the Future” (pictured above, taken from Wikipedia) and in Dr. Strangelove’s doomsday machine and even in the famous photo of Albert Einstein with his wild hair, sticking out his tongue at the camera. That’s how we like our scientists - misunderstood and unrestrained geniuses.

However, the mad scientist is not merely an image. In the history of science there were many examples of people who embodied this model - groundbreaking and unrestrained. People who in the name of the quest for knowledge disregarded morality, society and even self-preservation and refused to toe the line. Some were highly determined and even performed experiments on themselves , others did not fit the existing framework and even lost their sanity while fighting for the truth. Here we will get to know a few of them - people whose spark of madness has driven them to change the world. 

Deliberate Infection of a Child - Edward Jenner

The Smallpox virus killed hundreds of millions of people, left many of its survivors scarred and disabled and was rightfully known as the “Angel of Death''. These days we are unfamiliar with it, and it has become the first and only disease so far that humanity has managed to eradicate completely. This was made possible thanks to one rural English doctor, brilliant but lacking in ethics, named Edward Jenner - a man who, using draconian methods, managed to develop a vaccine against the most extensive mass murderer in history, perhaps apart from the “ Black Death ”.  

Jenner had a brilliant idea. He noticed that cattle breeders who were infected with the disease suffered only very minor symptoms and recovered almost immediately. He gradually realized that, as a result of their constant contact with sick farm animals, they were in fact infected with a similar but slightly different disease - Cowpox. Then came his great idea - if he was to deliberately infect people with cowpox, Jenner thought, they would develop immunity against the deadly human version of the disease. 

A good idea should be tested experimentally, and fortunately, people trusted Jenner’s reputation as a respected community doctor and thus allowed him to do terrible things to them. In 1796 he conducted his famous experiment. Jenner took a male child subject, scratched his skin and applied, directly on the scratch, pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of a milkmaid who had contracted cowpox from a cow. As expected, the child experienced a very mild version of the disease and recovered quickly. Jenner then repeated the same process, using pus from a blister of a person infected with smallpox, and fortunately, the experiment was a success and the child remained healthy. How unfortunate it would have been had it turned out that Jenner was wrong and the child would have died.

Jenner’s vision turned out nicely. Without any knowledge of viruses, and without the moral inhibitions that may have prevented him from performing the experiment, he created an effective vaccine against a deadly disease and paved the road for other vaccines that saved hundreds of millions from severe and deadly diseases. In fact, the terms “Vaccination” and “Vaccine” were derived from the latin word “Vacca” (cow) as reference to Jenner’s experiment. A worldwide vaccination campaign during the 20th century succeeded at completely eradicating smallpox, such that today copies of the virus exist only in two laboratories in the world and the last patient was diagnosed in 1977.

A brilliant experiment with no moral inhibitions. Jenner in a painting by Raphael Smith | Image: Wikipedia

The Wizard of the West - Nikola Tesla

Few inventors have influenced our lives more than Nikola Tesla. He is mainly remembered for his brilliant inventions in the fields of electricity and radio, but even more so for his extraordinary and capricious personality. Despite his brilliant mind and groundbreaking discoveries, he received almost no reward for his inventions and died destitute and penniless.  

Already as a child in Serbia, Tesla demonstrated brilliant engineering talent. In 1881 he began working as a telegraph operator and immediately developed a machine that would send signals in morse code in his stead and allow him to invest his time in other endeavors. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States and began working for the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, but the two quickly fell out over competition for money and prestige. The rivalry between the two intensified when Tesla teamed up with industrialist George Westinghouse to promote his alternating current technology, as opposed to the direct current technology promoted by Edison. Tesla and his partner won the war of currents by a landslide, but Tesla himself did not reap the rewards. He waived the copyright and patents and let Westinghouse take the grand prize.  

Tesla also took part in the invention of the radio. In 1900 he patented a method for transmission of radio waves based on the voltage transformer concept, but lost the patent and the prestige to the Italian Guglielmo Marconi. Only six months after Tesla’s death did a court of law restore his rights to the invention.  

Tesla’s feverish mind has also produced brilliant inventions that were less successful. One of the standout inventions is the Tesla Coil, which allegedly allowed the projection of electric lighting in a cordless manner over long distances. The inventor even managed to transmit electricity using this method to a distance of 28 miles, but soon the funding source for the  project was cut and Tesla once again ended up broke. His other inventions also include an electric car, a machine that generates earthquakes, a lightbulb without a filament, an X-ray machine and more.

Similar to his inventions, his life was also unusual. Tesla slept for only two hours every night and used to feed pigeons from his hotel window. He also spent thousands of dollars on medical care for injured pigeons, including a white female pigeon towards which, according to his words, he developed true love and built a device to support the pigeons’ broken wing and leg. Towards the end of his life he used to annually declare strange inventions, such as an engine that runs on cosmic rays, a new form of energy that contradicts Einstein, a machine that fires death rays and more.  

Tesla gained fame in his lifetime, but not comfort, and was even called “The Wizard of the West”. Many tales surrounded him, some even attributed to him the invention of a time machine. Rumors of his strange inventions spread further after his death, when FBI agents stormed his residence and confiscated documents and instruments. The unit of measure of the strength of a magnetic field is currently named after him. He is mostly remembered as a brilliant and delusional man who continues inspiring scientists and entrepreneurs to this day.

Head of a Cult - Pythagoras

From a distance of over 2,600 years there is no certain way of diagnosing a person’s character and personality, but the sure thing is that the Greek mathematician Pythagoras was a brilliant and charismatic person, whose science and philosophy became his was of life and who swept masses of  fans who made him their guru.

Today we know Pythagoras mostly for the mathematical theorem named after him, which deals with the relations between the edges of a right triangle. For his contemporaries, however, he was, above all, a religious leader. His students, members of the Pythagorean school of philosophy, operated as a secret society with rigorous admission trials, which included, among other things, a five-year vow of silence. They focused their lives on philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and music, believed in reincarnation and avoided eating meat. Their motto, or “the foundation of the world” according to their dogma, was the number

Many legends formed around Pythagoras, including members generated by his disciples and members of his cult, which outlasted him by many years and some claim that his disciples were actively responsible for a large part of the mathematical discoveries that were attributed to their leader. It was also claimed that he was the son of Apollo, that his body radiated light, that he had a golden thigh and that he could be seen in multiple places at the same time. It is naturally difficult to tell which of these myths were created during his lifetime and which were formed after his death. 

Either way, his contribution to science, philosophy and even music, directly, as a mathematician or indirectly, as a teacher and spiritual guide, is unquestionable. His work also bought him many enemies. His cult’s gathering place in Crotone, Italy was eventually set on fire, and according to some versions, he was killed in a lynch.  

Incitement to Murder - Stanley Milgram

The findings were surprising and groundbreaking: 65 percent of the subjects reached the highest voltage strength, 450 volts, at which the person taking the memory test supposedly no longer responded to the shocks. No subject stopped before 300 volts - well above the voltage strength of a home power grid. Many of them expressed severe signs of distress and anxiety, but kept shocking the “tested” actor nonetheless.   

Apart from the appraisal he received for his findings, there was also fierce criticism over the ethical implications of his experiments. His critics argued that people should not be placed in a position where they believe that they have killed another person, and also had reservations regarding the deception element of the experiment, which is very common to this day in experiments in social psychology. However, it should be stated in his defense that when questioned following the experiment, 84% of the subjects described the experience as positive, and 15% described it as neutral.  

The experiment greatly influenced the world of social psychology and led to further studies on the subject of obedience to authority. The most famous among them is Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment, in which test subjects were randomly assigned to wardens and inmates and adopted these roles so thoroughly that the experiment got out of control and was stopped half way through. Today, influenced in part by the discussion provoked by Milgram’s experiments, ethical norms have changed and it is currently unacceptable to cause such severe distress to test subjects, even if only temporarily.

Involuntary confinement - Ignaz Semmelweis 

And finally, meet Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian obstetrician who was forcibly committed to a mental hospital by his colleagues, when the contemporary scientific community of his days refused to accept his blatantly correct claim that doctors should wash their hands. 

Semmelweis held a managerial position in the maternal ward of the Vienna General Hospital, at a time when a huge proportion of women (10-33%) died after childbirth from blood sepsis and other infectious diseases collectively referred to as “Childbed Fever”. His ward, the First Clinic at the Vienna General Hospital, suffered from a high mortality rate that reached a peak of 18.3%, compared with only 2% at the hospital’s parallel maternal ward, the Second Clinic, and troubled by these numbers, Semmelweis tried to figure out the reason for this difference.  

At a certain point he realized the crucial difference between wards - the other ward employed mostly midwives, while his ward employed many doctors who were engaged in autopsies during the course of teaching medical students. Semmelweis reasoned that ‘cadaverous particles’ from the corpses, carried by the doctors on their hands (known today as bacteria) - are the cause of Childbed Fever.

The solution he proposed was simple - washing hands with a disinfectant after performing an autopsy, and indeed once this rule was implemented the mortality rate dropped to 2.38 percent, and went to nearly zero when they started disinfecting instruments utilized during childbirth. However, the medical establishment refused to accept this conclusion and considered it a pseudoscientific superstition, contradicting the paradigm that diseases are caused by an imbalance between the four humors of the body (according to Hippocrates’ theory). Many doctors were also offended by the requirement to wash their hands. Semmelweis was met with contempt at every turn and was forced to move to Pesht in Hungary, where his methods were considered a success. In his previous ward in Vienna, however, mortality rates soared again to a staggering 35 percent.

He finally published his findings in 1861, in a book that was met with cold reviews. Semmelweis kept fighting the medical establishment, until he suffered from a nervous breakdown in 1865 and was forcibly committed to a mental hospital in Vienna. There he apparently misbehaved, was beaten, and died from septic shock two weeks later. His ideas kept penetrating and received scientific confirmation with the discovery of bacteria, until finally, the medical establishment was forced to abandon the previous mistaken paradigm and adopt hygiene. Semmelweis is remembered today as one of the fathers of epidemiology and a fearless fighter for the truth - for which he paid a heavy toll.

Columns > Published on May 18th, 2012

LURID: It's Alive! The Top 10 Mad Scientists of Literature!

LURID: vivid in shocking detail; sensational, horrible in savagery or violence, or, a twice-monthly guide to the merits of the kind of Bad Books you never want your co-workers to know you're reading.

From the beginnings of humanity, we’ve struggled to find our place in this wondrous and confusing universe.  It’s in our nature as a species to question, to seek, to theorize, but on our millennia-long quest for knowledge about ourselves and our surroundings, not everything we’ve learned has been to the benefit of all humankind.

Sometimes knowledge comes at a terrible price; what looks like an advance might be a huge step backwards.  Tools for creation can be converted into seeds of mass destruction.  A short-term elixir can evolve into a long-term poison.  It’s not surprising we’re so conflicted about the relationship between science and society.  That’s why we need Mad Scientist stories, now and in centuries past.  Although technology is always changing, our fear of it remains the same.  Manifesting that fear through horror fiction is our way of keeping the excesses of laboratory lunacy reined in, at least on the pages and screens of our shared nightmares.

Since the Age of Reason, we’ve shown outward fealty to Science, organizing our civilization around scientific principles from health to agriculture to manufacture to transport.  Whatever scientists decree, we do.  And we resent it.  So, simultaneously, we relish fiction that functions as a scientific cautionary tale, anything that shows hyperbolized scientists, with crazy haircuts, over-reaching themselves with horrific consequences – the more grotesque and outrageous those consequences the better.  It seems there’s still a pitchfork-waving villager inside every one of us, ready to break out the flaming torches at the first sign of an experiment gone wrong. 

Mad Scientists are complex figures, anarchist outsiders paradoxically yearning for the adulation and acceptance from conventional society that a major scientific breakthrough might bring.  From Dr. Faustus to Mrs. Coulter, they just want to be loved.  They also represent our last stubborn belief in magic, the scientist as illuminatus, privy to secrets from beyond the veil.  The Mad Scientist master narrative tends to revolve around alchemy, rather than specific branches of physics, chemistry or biology.

Their stories follow a consistent paradigm: visionary thought is punished as hubris, the offending scientist is nullified (usually by some nice-but-dim anti-intellectual), social mores are re-established, but some hint of the aberrant creation remains, in limbo, a threat to be reactivated should any presumptuous individual dare to indulge such delusions again. 

One of the earliest Mad Scientists is Prometheus, the Titan condemned to a state of perpetual agony (thanks to the eagle munching on his liver) after he stole fire, that first great technological advancement, from the gods and gave it to men.  Prior to that, Prometheus attracted Olympian ire by figuring out a way to cheat Zeus on the meat content of sacrificial cattle, and by teaching humans the basic scientific principles of mathematics, agriculture and medicine.  He’s an important figure in ancient Greek mythology, grasping for forbidden knowledge because he believes that it’s vital to human development, and that the up side always outweighs the down.  He’d agree with Arthur C. Clarke that “the only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”

Before the twentieth century, Mad Scientists were shown as challenging the natural, divinely decreed (and usually binary) order of things.  The first five on my list definitely reached for the impossible.  Dr. Faustus toyed with damnation vs. salvation.  Dr. Frankenstein aimed to break down the boundaries between Life and Death.  Dr. Jekyll wanted to test the moral line between good and evil, Dr. Moreau the biological division between animals and humans. Drs. Dyer and Danforth meddled with ancient fortifications dividing human from alien beings.  But these men are a lost breed.  The coming of the machine age made technological progress less about the ‘Eurekas’ from individuals standing on the shoulder of giants, more about teamwork and lab dollars. 

The Classics

1. dr faustus ( the tragical history of the life and death of dr faustus   by christopher marlowe 1604).

In the early 16th century, there was only one science for madmen: alchemy.  In its heyday, it didn’t just involve turning lead in to gold, conferring immortality, creating homunculi or raising the dead, but was also about opening up communication channels with angels and devils.  For his memorable protagonist, Marlowe blended the German legend with biographical details from his contemporary John Dee, master alchemist and Elizabeth I’s astrologer.  As the play opens, Faustus, “glutted now with learning’s golden gifts”, claims to know everything in terms of the usual disciplines of logic, law, divinity and medicine, and vows to turn to the “metaphysics of magicians”.  This extra level of knowledge will make him a demi-god.  Enter Mephistopheles, who promises to teach him everything he needs to know.  There’s just one small price to pay: eternal damnation.

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2. Victor Frankenstein ( Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus   by Mary Shelley 1818)

By the early 19 th century, alchemy was no longer de rigeur.  Unfortunately, the young Victor Frankenstein doesn’t get the memo.  As a teenager he chances upon the work of uber-alchemist Cornelius Agrippa in the family library and, unaware that “the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient,” he devours the volume, and tucks into Paracelcus and Albertus Magnus too.  When he arrives at the university of Ingolstadt, he’s more than a little upset to be told that he needs to study dull in comparison chemistry instead.  Harking back to a golden era “when the masters of the science sought immortality and power”, he decides to undertake a little research project of his own.  And the rest is literary history.

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3. Dr. Henry Jekyll ( The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde   by Robert Louis Stevenson 1886)

Dr. Henry Jekyll’s experiments with an alter ego are also vaguely alchemical in nature.  His avowed goal is to create a tincture that could control and shake “the very fortress of identity”, but in his confession he is deliberately vague about the ingredients.  All he will say is that he purchases large quantities of “a particular salt” he hypothesizes is key to transformation, and then tests it on himself.  The drug induces “a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death.”  It gives Jekyll access not to higher knowledge, but to a coarser self:

“I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.  I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.”

Although the experiment initially seems like a success, it doesn’t take long before this monstrous alter ego, Mr. Hyde, is on a murderous rampage through London, and Jekyll is faced with the perennial Mad Scientist problem of damage control.

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4. Dr. Moreau ( The Island of Dr. Moreau   by H.G. Wells 1896)

Dr. Moreau flees London after the cruelty of his animal experiments shock even a Victorian nation, and winds up on a remote island where he can vivisect to his heart’s content.  The action of the novel introduces us, via a shipwrecked sailor, Prendick, more than a decade into Moreau’s bizarre experiment to turn animals into humans (not, as Moreau takes pains to explain, turning humans into animals, which would be barbaric).  Prendick finds himself an unwelcome houseguest in the monstrous menagerie, worrying that he might be next under Moreau’s knife and wake up one morning as a hybrid.  His presence causes chaos on the island, and, inevitably brings the project to a visceral end.  Wells dismissed his novel as “an exercise in youthful blasphemy”.  In it he implies that Moreau’s work is less about genuine scientific discovery and more about the “because I can” of a delusional megalomaniac who wants to be king of the Beast Folk.  However, we currently live in a world where genetic hybrids like spider-goats and camel-llamas are part of agricultural reality, so Moreau may well be having the last laugh.

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5. Danforth & Dyer ( At The Mountains of Madness   by H.P. Lovecraft 1931)

H. P. Lovecraft’s stories are stuffed with isolated intellectuals obsessed by prohibited knowledge, often of an alchemical nature ( The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dreams In The Witch House ), and his creations include Dr. Herbert West, who out-delusions both Frankenstein and Moreau when it comes to playing God with human body parts.  However, in 1931 Lovecraft delivered a different type of Mad Scientist to pulp fiction fans; the fatally self-aware prophet.  When geologist William Dyer embarks on a Miskatonic University expedition to the Antarctic, he has no idea that it will bring him into contact with an ancient, alien civilization.  However, when he realizes that his colleagues have been eviscerated and an entire encampment destroyed by a couple of defrosted Elder Things, his first reaction is not to, as any sane scientist might, turn tail and flee.  Instead, he and his Poe-quoting, Necronomicon -reading colleague, Danforth, hotfoot it into the heart of the creatures’ surreal city, a “monstrous tangle of stone dark stone towers”, characterized (in uniquely Lovecraftian terms) by “infinite bizarrerie, endless variety, preternatural massiveness, and utterly alien exoticism.”  They know they shouldn’t be there, but they keep exploring until they come face to face with the ultimate nightmare being, a Shoggoth.  As they manage, against the odds, to escape, Danforth glances back and witnesses a “final horror” that drives him to the point of complete mental breakdown.  Dyer couches the account of his experiences as a dire warning (“I would not speak of them now but for the need of heading off that Starkweather-Moore Expedition”), but his claims to logic and sanity don’t fool the reader.  We know only a madman would have gone into the mountains in the first place.

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The Moderns

World War Two proved to be a watershed for science.  Before Oppenheimer and Mengele’s experiments became international headlines in 1945, Mad Scientists tended to be eccentric individuals, their private laboratories fuelled by hereditary wealth.  After the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the atom bomb, it became apparent that governments were in on the game, and the most extreme scientific madness was funded by research grants.  The post-WW2 Mad Scientists on this list work for clinics and corporations; Dr. Vaughan starts out at a TV station, and Mrs. Coulter’s paymasters are the Catholic Church, Inc. 

Mengele, Auschwitz’s ‘Angel of Death’, performed experiments on human subjects that would have made Drs. Moreau and West nauseous.  There was no rhyme or reason to his in vivo investigations into twins, dwarves, Roma or pregnant women; he cut them up - usually without anaesthesia - and killed them anyway. Survivor Alex Dekel said “The patients did not count. He professed to do what he did in the name of science, but it was a madness on his part."  After the reality of Mengele became part of cultural consciousness, Mad Scientists in fiction came to be cut from a different, more authentic cloth.

6. Dr. Josef Mengele ( The Boys From Brazil   by Ira Levin 1976)

Ira Levin went straight to the source for his mad scientist.  More than thirty years after Mengele disappeared to South America, he still cast enough of a shadow to drive this narrative about ongoing Nazi experiments into human cloning.  Logically, a loyal member of the Third Reich is going to clone the Führer, and the plot concerns the discovery by Nazi hunter, Yakov Liebermann, that there are almost a hundred replica Hitlers growing up worldwide.  Although Mengele’s got the biology right (all the clones look eerily similar, with licks of dark hair and hypnotic blue eyes), he doesn’t want to leave the nurture angle up to chance and has had the clones adopted into family circumstances similar to Hitler’s own.  This means, at the age of thirteen, the boys all have to lose their father.  Liebermann goes toe-to-toe with Mengele (many a frustrated Nazi hunter’s dream), but destroying the Mad Scientist in this scenario doesn’t necessarily equate to destroying his plans for world domination.

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7. Dr. Karl Pedersen ( Wonderland   by Joyce Carol Oates 1971)

Luckless teenager, Jesse Vogel, escapes death alongside the rest of his family at the business end of his father’s shotgun only to be adopted into the well-padded bosom of the Pedersens.  Dr. Karl, his wife Mary, son Frederich and daughter Hilda, are all obese - and Oates’ prose invokes their waistlines expanding even further during the course of the narrative – their excess body fat cushioning them from the outside world and each other’s bottomless misery.  Frederich is a musical prodigy, Hilda is a mathematical mastermind, Mary is an alcoholic, all of them orbiting round the whims and madness of Karl who sees them as nothing more than test subjects for his bizarre medical philosophies.  He views the unfortunate patients at his clinic in exactly the same way (“Once a patient has come to him, he believes the patient is his .  The patient’s life is his .  He owns the patient, he owns the disease, he owns everything.  Oh, he’s crazy”).  Despite his small town status, Pedersen’s delusions (as well as destroying his wife’s mind he wants to patent various germ warfare devices) are dangerous and destructive, and he’s one of Oates’ most chilling creations.

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8.  Emeric Belasco ( Hell House   by Richard Matheson 1971)

Hell House has featured as a Lurid pick before.  The entity at the center of the haunting, Emeric Belasco, also serves as a paradigmatic Mad Scientist.  "His mind may have been aberrant, but it was brilliant too... He could master any subject he chose to study.  He spoke and read a dozen languages.  He was versed in natural and metaphysical philosophy.  He'd studied all the religions, cabalist and Rosicrucian doctrines, ancient mysteries.  His mind was a storehouse of information, a powerhouse of energy...a charnelhouse of fancies." After being left ten and a half million dollars by his father, he builds a mansion in 1919, invites a bunch of houseguests, and subjects them to a series of cruel psychological experiments in order to discover how low human beings can really go.  By July of 1929, Belasco is presiding over "a group of drug addicted doctors [who] started to experiment on animals and humans, testing pain thresholds, exchanging organs, creating monstrosities."  By November, everyone's dead - but Belasco's body is never found. Trumping all the others on this list, he's discovered a way to continue his bizarre experiments even after death. 

Hell House is a case of 'set a Mad Scientist to catch a Mad Scientist'.  The equally barking Dr. Lionel Barrett, a physicist dedicated to investigating "the undiscovered mysteries of the human spectrum, the infrared capacities of our bodies, the ultraviolet capacities of our minds"  wants to test the phosporescent tubes of his Reversor (a kind of ghost sucking machine) on Belasco's shade, and the stage is set for a Mad Scientist battle royale.  Although Matheson situates Belasco’s Sadean manipulation of others in the decadence of the 1920s, his attitude is pure 1970s, part of the same scientific context as the Milgram and Stanford experiments.  If he were alive today, Belasco would be a big fan of reality TV, especially Big Brother .

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9.  Dr. Robert Vaughan ( Crash   by J.G. Ballard 1973)

Dr. Vaughan is a demented figure from the get-go, obsessed with organizing his death-by-head-on-car-crash-with Elizabeth Taylor.  “On a pair of scarred and uneven legs repeatedly injured in one or other vehicle collision, the harsh and unsettling figure of this hoodlum scientist came into my life at a time when his obsessions were self-evidently those of a madman.” Although he’s wholly a product of the automobile age, he’s also a throwback to the aristocratic, educated arrogance of the nineteenth century madmen:  “Literate, ambitious and adept at self-publicity, he was saved from being no more than a pushy careerist with a Ph.D. by a strain of naive idealism, his strange vision of the automobile and its real role in our lives.”  He’s insane, but visionary, able to gather disciples who share his belief in the orgasmic power of metal penetrating flesh and the desire to create human-automobile hybrids.  He’d be entirely at home on the island of Dr. Moreau.

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10.  Mrs. Coulter ( Northern Lights  / The Golden Compass  by Philip Pullman 1995)

The only woman on this list embodies both the classic and modern Mad Scientist traits.  Marisa Coulter presents as a sophisticated, even glamorous scholar, one of the few female members of the Royal Arctic Institute, able to explain to a bemused Lyra that five planets orbit the sun.  She’s very dangerous when roused (“Mrs. Coulter seemed to be charged with some kind of anbaric force. She even smelled different: a hot smell, like heated metal, came off her body”).  As well as being a handy member of any team setting out to explore the Mountains of Madness, she would have been at home at a Nazi cocktail party, thanks to her experience with the General Oblation Board.  Like Mengele, she had no qualms about using children as subjects for experimentation (investigations into the barbaric and usually fatal process of “intercision”) and like Faustus, she ultimately comes to regret the pact she’s made with the Devil in the cause of furthering her alchemical insight.

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In 2012, Prometheus is the title of the eagerly anticipated Ridley Scott movie that started out as an Alien prequel but, like so many mad science experiments before it, mutated into something… else.  In it, Scott revisits the most enduring Mad Scientist tropes – the overwhelming thirst for forbidden knowledge, the disdain for individual safety, the miscalculation of consequences, the Holymotherofgodwhatthefuckwasthat? moment of truth, and the frantic attempt at negation or reversal of the failed experiment before the whole of humanity pays the price.  It wears the literary influences listed below on its blockbuster-budget sleeves.  A must-see horror movie, it’s the monstrous child of these many fathers.  Mad Scientists obviously still rule our imaginations.

Who are your favorite Mad Scientists, both classic and modern?  I could only get ten on the list.  Over to you, LitReactors…

About the author

Karina Wilson is a British writer based in Los Angeles. As a screenwriter and story consultant she tends to specialize in horror movies and romcoms (it's all genre, right?) but has also made her mark on countless, diverse feature films over the past decade, from indies to the A-list. She is currently polishing off her first novel, Exeme, and you can read more about that endeavor here .

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Mad Scientist Laboratory

His laboratory was equipped with the sophisticated tools of modern science: Jacob's Ladders, Van De Graaf generators, bulky pilot-lit cabinets, poorly-adjusted Bunsen burners, retorts bubbling with sinister chemicals, murky jars holding mutant monstrosities, strung wires with bad insulation. — Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space

The place where Science! happens. Usually pronounced "lah-BOHR-ah-tor-ee" in ominous, stentorian tones.

Every Mad Scientist has to have a lab. This is typically a refurbished dungeon of some sort, with aging stone walls; some are instead in higher locations, for better access to lightning , astronomical lookouts, and vantage points for Death Rays . Particularly enterprising scientists may have multiple such labs in different points of their home base. Regardless of location, they also must contain most of the following lab equipment:

• An operating table . Two if the Mad Scientist does brain transplants . Optional, though, is the winch for raising the table up to the roof.
• A roof that opens to the sky, to let the lightning in and/or the Death Ray out.
• A 1960s-style mainframe computer with big dials and switches on the front. Add spinning tape reels for extra credit.
• Bits of animals and people preserved in formaldehyde . Maybe even People Jars , depending on how scary the writer wants the lab to be .
• A whole bunch of glassware , especially test tubes, beakers, flasks of colored liquid , distilling columns, condensers, burettes, Bunsen burners, and that thing you get when you hook a bunch of them together.
• Optionally, depending on your flavor of Mad Scientist , you may find a wall generously populated with chains and manacles (just to make sure the experimental subjects stay handy and don't wander away).
• A big worn chalkboard or several, filled with complicated equations, indecipherable diagrams and abstruse symbols.
• Dusty piles of incomprehensible failed experiments , which may or may not suddenly become a danger to anyone wandering around unsupervised.
• May be in the dungeon of the Haunted Castle , or on an isolated tropical island.
• Big levers or control panels ( that may or may not explode ).
• Ginormous knife switches for completing dangerous electric circuits.
• In older works, a caged Killer Gorilla — presumably as a test subject and/or henchman — was a popular addition. In modern works, rows of caged creatures, either experimental subjects or the scientist's own creations , are a common touch.

Never mind that real science does not generally call for all of these things at the same time — or within the same discipline! — the Mad Scientist doesn't specialize . All the same, most of what he does will at least look like chemistry , since nothing shouts "science" to the casual viewer more than a guy in a lab coat fiddling with a beaker of colored liquid .

Laboratory glassware frequently shows up in period settings that predate their invention. Erlenmeyer Flasks, glass retorts, Griffin/Berzelius beakers, separatory funnels, Leibig condensers, and even test tubes date back only as far as the late 18th century at best; some of these were clearly developed in the mid to late 19th century. Dedicated laboratory equipment did not truly exist prior to the early 1800s and even then would have been primitive bearing little resemblance to familiar modern glassware. Prior to that, much chemistry was done with whatever bowls and jars were already available. Other equipment (such as alembics) was made of metal.

Also never mind that modern chemistry has very little use for the big impressive glass-sculpture thing with with a lot of burettes, condensers, and funny coils of glass. (These actually were useful constructs at one time, but they're the chemistry equivalent of doing differential equations on an abacus. Also, even when they were used, a typical experimental setup would have consisted of three to six of the pieces put together; never dozens of pieces, all connected, as shown on the screen.) Most of these glassware setups appear to be inspired by random fuzzy pictures of the classic Miller-Urey experiment which can actually be simplified once you understand what is actually going on. But you need this stuff because otherwise, the audience won't realize that Science goes on here.

A significant portion of mad scientist laboratories are not low budget small scale DIY projects that take up no more than a spare table in a corner. Instead, these labs are very elaborate for someone who usually does not appear to have anyone funding them, let alone working for them. Often the equipment is huge, bulky, unwieldy, and difficult to transport and assemble for just one man, even with an assistant. It's worth remembering that many mad scientists are older men (or physically weak men) who would definitely not be able to manage such a feat on their own. While not a mad scientist, Batman fans will recognize a modern iteration of this dilemma whenever the question is posed of how Bruce Wayne (maybe with Alfred's help) managed to build the Batcave, Batmobile and all his equipment by himself in secret .

The archetypical movie Mad Scientist Laboratory probably came from the classic silent film Metropolis , though Universal's Frankenstein (1931) added a fair amount. Both were probably strongly influenced by a real-life example that was a staple in popular media between 1900 and 1940; the various laboratories of Nikola Tesla , which actually did feature gigantic incomprehensible machinery, scary robotic devices, Tesla coils, and lots of gaudy electric-arc effects.

All of the film, TV, and comic versions of the Mad Scientist's Lab derive originally from Gothic Horror stories of the 18th and 19th centuries, the most famous of them being Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein and H. G. Wells ' The Island of Doctor Moreau . The concept developed from older stories about the lairs of alchemists and sorcerers. The Enlightenment put paid to many kinds of mystical dabbling by dilettantes, tinkerers, and wealthy eccentrics, but these characters were replaced in the public imagination by gentleman scientists — many of them self-taught, many very eccentric — who built laboratories and observatories in their homes and made a number of important discoveries in the new disciplines of chemistry, physics, and biology.

The age of the gentleman scientist was ending by the 1850s, when the most famous of them, Charles Darwin , published his Theory of Evolution. More and more, experimental research became associated with facilities provided by universities, foundations, museums, governments and industry. However, the romantic image of the mad scientist — isolated from his fellows and angry with a world that would suppress his ideas — has deep archetypal power. It's also dramatically compact , needing only the scientist, an assistant, and a faithful servant or two as characters. The meme 's emotional energy and enactment efficiency has kept it alive into the 21st Century, and it's even routinely projected into future scenarios via television shows like Star Trek and The Outer Limits (1963) .

This is edging toward becoming a Discredited Trope , at least in the classic beaker/Jacob's Ladder/operating table configuration. For the more modern variations, see Hacker Cave . For labs that were once this, but ended up being evacuated due to an experiment that went wrong, see Abandoned Laboratory . If someone's paying a visit and goes unnoticed, then it's Unguided Lab Tour .

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• Dragon Ball Z : The Mad Scientist Dr. Gero has one where he works on his android project. Despite its destruction, the version of his ultimate creation Cell from the future is unaffected thanks to the way in which Trunks' time machine operates.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS : Jail Scaglietti has the operating table, but lacks most of the other stuff. He makes up for it by having rows and rows and rows of People Jars .
• Mazinger Z : Big Bad Dr. Hell had his own laboratory installed in his Supervillain Lair , but it was barely seen in the series. Dr. Kabuto's lab in the original manga also counts.
• Rebuild World : Doctor Yatsubiyashi's clinic in the slums he set up for Playing with Syringes on the residents in exchange for free medical treatment looks like this, which is immediately lampshaded by Akira who complains to Sheryl, who doesn't do anything about it because the residents are Too Desperate to Be Picky . Yatsubiyashi says it's inspired by designs used by Precursors . Sure enough, he ends up making a character into a Tragic Monster in its facilities.
• Soul Eater : Professor Franken Stein has quite an interesting home/lab. Stitched patterns are found randomly throughout the house, both the inside and outside (and also on his clothes and even his person). He has an older looking computer and many chemistry related items such as a Bunsen burner, beakers, Erlenmeyer flasks, etc. (which, it should be noted, he occasionally uses as drinking glasses ). Arrows are painted on the floor pointing in different directions, usually away and toward doorways.
• Tenchi Muyo! : Washuu has a giant laboratory that spans five planets , set up in other-dimensional space and accessible through a door that is usually located under the stairs in Tenchi's house, but which can vanish or move as Washuu wills it.
• Wild Fangs : Syon was created and grew up in one of these, of the castle dungeon variety.
• Robin (1993) : Tim leads the Teen Titans into a secret underground lab belonging to Lex Luthor that's full of autonomous robots, half-finished experiments, and vials of manufactured cures and diseases in search of a cure for Superboy , who was dying at the time.
• Wonder Woman (1942) : Paula's lab hidden beneath Holliday College is full of large strange electronics and knife switches tied into her Space Converter alongside tables covered in glassware full of colorful liquids. There's also an operating table surrounded by the equipment needed to make a Purple Ray strong enough to heal the very recently deceased.
• Wonder Woman (1987) : Dr. Lazarus's lab is more tidy version than normal filled with shelving, computers and tables with the centerpiece a strange round thing with giant cocoon like objects hanging from it and several spark gaps, calling to mind a Jacob's Ladder but actually being part of his machine with which he intends to resurrect his son.
• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon) : In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, the basement levels of the abandoned Monarch outpost where Alan Jonah's paramilitary took up residence are implied to be functioning as this. The rest of the outpost has effectively turned into an Abandoned Laboratory with Artificial Zombies roaming as of Chapter 7.
• The Emperor's New Groove : Yzma's "secret lab", which contains dozens of transforming potions. note  Unfortunately they are all the same color and not properly labeled. Yzma and Kronk enter it by a roller coaster ride accessed by pulling a lever on the wall, though Kronk occasionally pulls the wrong one.
• Megamind : Megamind, a science-based supervillain, has an impressively huge one, complete with Tesla coils and blinky dials.
• Back to the Future : Doc Brown's lab, originally the garage of his family estate, is crammed full of all types of scientific gear. He even has the old tape drives to (presumably) the 1950s/'60s style computer he would have used to invent time travel.
• Blackenstein : Despite all his talk of DNA and laser surgery, the Dr. Stein's laboratory set uses Kenneth Strickfaden's original sparking and zapping electrical equipment from Frankenstein (1931) .
• A Cure for Wellness : There's a locked tower on the spa grounds that the protagonist Lockhart eventually breaks into. He finds stairs leading down to a grotto containing an underground laboratory, which is replete in 19th century-style with beakers containing mutated fetuses, dissected eels, and scientific notebooks. It turns out the anachronistic look is not a coincidence, as the doctor who runs the spa is a lot older than he appears .
• The Dark Crystal : The Chamber of Life, where the Skeksis drain innocent Podlings of their life essence. It's filled with Ridiculously Cute Critters in cages, which skekTek the Scientist performs cruel experiments on.
• Dracula vs. Frankenstein : Dr. Durea has a secret laboratory hidden beneath the Creature Emporium — the house of horrors he runs at the amusement park — where he conducts all of his experiments in developing his blood serum. Much of the electrical lab equipment in the lab are props originally used in the 1931 Frankenstein film. Ken Strickfaden, who had designed all the electrical gadgetry in that film, supplied the equipment.
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (A'yoy) : Jekyll has one, full of technicolor chemistry and stuff. Although the potato doesn't really do anything.
• The Fly (1986) updates and downplays the "gentleman scientist" inspirations for this trope with Seth Brundle's lab. It's located on the top floor of an Abandoned Warehouse in a lonesome part of Toronto, and despite it also serving as his living quarters with a small kitchen, bedroom, etc. retains a stark appearance with its basic furnishings and lack of décor, since Seth is a Workaholic and has no social life. It has a skylight that factors into the climax ( allowing him to sneak into the central room by Wall Crawling and get the drop on Stathis ), shelves full of binders of papers, etc. serving as background detail, and is ultimately centered upon the exotic-looking "telepods" and the imposing computer that controls them. Early on, Seth actually provides some exposition to reporter (and later love interest) Veronica explaining that he had to commission the individual components for the telepods and "stick them together, but nobody knows what the project really is." His work is financed by a company (they met at a press event in the opening scene), "but they leave me alone because I'm not expensive, and they know that they'll end up owning it all, whatever it is."
• Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks : Count Frankenstein's laboratory contains operating tables, Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks , and an improbable number of Jacob's ladders.
• Frankenstein Island : Sheila Frankenstein has one in her house that is part electrical lab and part intensive care unit.
• Iron Man : Tony Stark has an updated version in the basement of his house: robot assistants , machine shop, electronics fabrication , CADCAM system.
• James Bond : The films have their resident good-guy Mad Scientist , Q; almost every film features a peek into his lab, which usually features several assistants participating in such dubious experiments as testing a new bulletproof vest by putting one on and getting shot.
• Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter : Maria has one set up in the monastery. The lab was actually composed of props from Universal Horror movies, and would largely be reused in Young Frankenstein .
• Kiss Me Quick! : Dr. Breedlove's laboratory has all of the standard mad scientist accoutrements, including Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks , an arcing Jacob's ladder, and a talking skull.
• Lady Frankenstein : Baron Frankenstein maintains one under his castle. It is filled with Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks , arcane electrical equipment, strange clockwork, a walk in cold room for keeping corpses...
• The Man Who Changed His Mind : Dr. Lurience's home lab, where he appears to swapping minds between bodies using a Jacob's ladder. His new lab at the Haselwood Institute looks far more high-tech and antiseptic, even if it performs the same function.
• Metropolis : Dr. Rotwang's laboratory is perhaps the earliest example of the trope on film, and features all the necessary paraphernalia, along with large pentagrams to tie him to the classical magician/alchemist archetypes.
• The Resurrected , a 1991 film adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward , recreates the scene where the hero has to navigate his way out of a subterranean laboratory/oubliette of failed Body Horror experiments after dropping his lamp .
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show : Dr. Frank N. Furter's lab is full of Big Electric Switches and octagonal monitors. The tank that Rocky is born in is the same one from The Revenge of Frankenstein .
• Sherlock Holmes (2009) : The "ginger midget" Luke Reordan, who turns out to be on Lord Blackwood's payroll, has two laboratories that are visited after his body is found in Blackwood's coffin. The first one's in his apartment, and the second is in a slaughterhouse. The walls of both places are adorned with writings and drawings that speak of experiments to combine sorcery with science as well as Reordan's connection to Blackwood who presents himself as The Antichrist . Holmes finds from the first laboratory most of the clues that later turn out to be essential in proving that Blackwood accomplished all his magical feats with science and trickery . The second laboratory was where Reordan created the chemical weapon Blackwood attempts to gas his opponents in the British Parliament with , and it's also where Dredger killed Reordan after the latter had delivered everything Blackwood wanted .
• The laboratory of Dr. Walter Jennings (with mutated fetus and tiny elephant), and the room in Shangri-La (shown in a deleted scene) where Totenkopf conducted experiments on radiation victims from his uranium mine.
• Dr. Totenkopf requires a special mention here as his 'laboratory' is a whole factory complex, complete with a rocket launch silo .
• Van Helsing : Being a send-up of Universal's classic horror movies , these naturally show up. The film opens in the laboratory of none other than Victor Frankenstein as he successfully brings his monster to life, and Dracula later appropriates the lab for his own purposes and then moves it to his own castle where he tries to complete the experiment. Another lab is shown earlier in the film where Carl develops weapons for Van Helsing to use against Dracula.
• Comrade Death , a short story by Gerald Kersh, features Sarek's Under World, the underground nightmare where his company's increasingly horrible chemical weapons are developed.
• The Chronicles of Professor Jack Baling : The titular character has a rather mundane version of one of these in a shed in his backyard, but in the second episode he encounters some really sophisticated ones in the Prometheus Corporation's HQ, some of which even have Jacob's ladders and bubbling beakers.
• Franny K. Stein : Franny's room is her laboratory, where the little girl mad scientist frequently conducts her experiments using whatever chemicals and technology she needs.
• Gaunt's Ghosts : The Ghosts' main objective in Salvation Reach is to raid a well-defended Chaos research facility and capture as much intelligence material as possible, which may be further used in advantage to the Crusade. The laboratory is described as grim halls filled with strange and disturbing devices. Although they cannot read them, even the mere touch of scrolls and dataslates stored there fills the Imperial Guardsmen with a feeling of dread .
• Heart of Steel : Alistair Mechanus has a sprawling labyrinth of a lair inside a dormant volcano on Shark Reef Isle, mainly comprised of laboratory and research space.
• Herbert West–Reanimator : The eponymous Mad Scientist has a hidden laboratory, first in a dilapidated farm house and later in his cellar, for his experiments of dead body revival and other, more gruesome , things. He also pursues a quasi-legitimate career in medicine and research at the Miskatonic University and could procure scientific apparatus — without attracting unwanted attention — by plain old theft.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades : The labyrinth beneath Kimberly Magic Academy is full of secret rooms that students and faculty alike use as laboratories for their academic research. In volume 1, Oliver and Nanao trace the kidnapped Katie to the lab of a fourth-year, Vera Miligan, which is full of the preserved cadavers of demihumans she's been experimenting on. In volume 2, Miligan gives Katie one of her other laboratories as a partial apology for that incident, which the Sword Roses use mainly as a home base for dungeon delves.
• Something More Than Night : Played with. The Mad Scientist 's secret basement laboratory is the site of genuine unethical mad science research, but because it was bankrolled by a movie mogul with an overdeveloped sense of drama and kitted out by his set construction department, a good proportion of the buzzing machines, bubbling tubes, unidentifiable specimens, etc. are just leftover props irrelevant to the actual task at hand. And the stone walls turn out, on closer inspection, to be textured plasterboard.
• Breaking Bad : The meth lab on wheels. It's got the smoking flasks, mysterious colored goo, and pretty much anything else they can cover with Rule of Cool .
• Henry's basement lab resembles one, and Jo even refers to it as such after searching it, describing it as containing "human organs" (Henry is a Medical Examiner) and "torture devices" ("Oh, those are for sex!"). It's entered through a trap door hidden under a rug, and there are Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks containing colored substances when they're not neatly put away in cabinets, as well as a large fish tank containing jellyfish note  Word of God says they are Immortal Jellyfish, but in reality those are much too small to show up in the tank . It doesn't help that Henry pronounces the word "laboratory" with emphasis on the second syllable, which most Americans associate with movie mad scientists.
• In the pilot, the Villain of the Week has created a lab in his garage, with Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks sporting bright purple residue from the aconite flowers he's creating poison with. Justifies as he's a chemist. '''Qyburn:''' Difficult to say, your Grace. But if [[TestedOnHumans my past work is any guide]]... we stand a chance. '''Cersei:''' Do everything you can. Come to me for anything you need. '''Qyburn:''' Thank you, your Grace. You should know, the process may... [[CameBackWrong change him]]. Somewhat. '''Cersei:''' Will it weaken him? '''Qyburn:''' ''[[CameBackStrong Oh, no]]''.-->
• The Munsters : Grandpa has a laboratory in the dungeon under the house where he performs experiments both scientific and mystical. For added fun, his Igor is a bat.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 : For seven seasons, the villains work in an Elaborate Underground Base ; the audience occasionally glimpses chemistry equipment, chalkboards, computer consoles and mysterious air ducts. Things become tighter when the villains' replacements have to work out of a space-travel-equipped VW Microbus, but this lasts for only one season — they return to a more appropriate environment soon enough. In the Screwed By the Studio Motion Picture , Dr. F's lab gets a major overhaul, complete with a fish tank filled with acid.
• Once Upon a Time (2011) : Of both Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll.
• Star Trek: Voyager : At the start of " Dark Frontier (Part 1) ", the ship is lit by blue flashes and the sound of electrical arcs, with the occasional burst of steam, even before they enter combat with Voyager.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation : In " Brothers ", we start at the requisite glass containers full of bubbling chemicals and a tube generating lightning-like effects before panning across to the more homely aspects of Dr. Soong's hideout.
• Supernatural . Played straight in " Monster Movie ", where the Monster of the Week is a fan of monster movies like Frankenstein , and so has his own laboratory to electrocute Dean via Big Electric Switch . More updated versions are seen in " Asylum " and " The Man Who Would Be King " — the latter being the most disturbing of all given that it involves Affably Evil Crowley dissecting demons while discussing business with supposed good-guy Castiel .
• Strange Science : The entire playfield is decorated like a classic laboratory. Operators can also install a backbox topper resembling a Jacob's ladder with an electric arc between the poles.
• Dino Attack RPG : XERRD — an entire organization of Mad Scientists — has three notable Mad Scientist Laboratories where they perform experiments on dinosaurs: the Dino Island Laboratory, the LEGO Island Laboratory, and the Adventurers' Island XERRD Fortress.
• Genius: The Transgression : A lab is very important to the protagonists. The problem is that lab space is expensive and obsessively making things that break when Muggles touch them is bad for the bank balance .
• Spirit of the Century : Der Blitzmann is a German Mad Scientist who has a portable lab in the form of his mechanical exoskeleton. Despite the nontraditional size and style, it does come complete with Tesla coils. Weaponized Tesla coils.
• Warhammer 40,000 : The workshop of a Mek, an Orc with both an instinctive understanding of technology and the Orks' general insanity, becomes one of these in short order, quickly filling with discarded parts, flashy lights, bare cogs and wires, spinny bits, and arcing electricity. This is generally an Invoked Trope , as many or most of these don't serve any real purpose; the Meks literally just put them there for the look.
• LEGO Friends : Olivia's Inventor's Workshop, complete with colored beakers of liquid and helpful robot assistant. Might be a bit too pink to completely qualify, though.
• LEGO Studios and LEGO Monster Fighters play this trope more straightly, with each line's resident Mad Scientist having his own personal laboratory where he creates a Captain Ersatz of Frankenstein's Monster .
• The Mighty Max toy line had a number of mad science-themed playsets, notably Dr. Gore's Haunted Castle in Skull Dungeon, which had a Frankenstein theme, and Professor Zygote's Volcano Lair in Dino Lab, located in a volcano, which had a distinct Jurassic Park (1993) theme to it.
• The Doctor Dreadful line of playsets allowed kids to basically have their own little mad scientist laboratories, complete with flasks, beakers, test tubes and other goodies, which they could use to make edible snacks.
• Nickelodeon produced the Thingmaker Chill-A-Tron Lab, which was like a cross between Doctor Dreadful and Creepy Crawlers; like Doctor Dreadful, it had a mad scientist theme to it, but, like Creepy Crawlers, you couldn't eat what you made. It worked using ice rather than heat.
• The 7th Guest : Henry Stauf has one, rather well hidden in his mansion. It is infamously known for a now-impossible minigame of Infection inside a microscope there. On top of that, a rather squicky cutscene can be watched of a ghost patient who wakes up and finds that half of his head is missing, then reaches down and tries to put his brain back.
• Animal Crossing : Cobb, a pig villager, tends to decorate his house along these lines. In Animal Crossing: New Leaf , he has walls lined with bookshelves, a large whiteboard, a set of metal shelves filled with flasks and bottles, a laboratory sink, a large computer bank of unclear purpose with a Florence flask filled with green fluid laid on it, and a "laboratory bench" consisting of a metal bed attached to a pair of defibrillators shaped to fit over a person's temples. In Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer , his required items are the shelves of bottles and the Florence flask from his New Leaf home, alongside a giant tube filled with green liquid and a vague bobbing shape. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons , he goes for a more bookish theme, retaining the library walls but swapping out the high-tech furniture for piles of books, loose documents and crumpled papers, although he does retain a whiteboard covered in indecipherable writing.
• Bad Mojo : Roger Samms converted half of his apartment into a small version of this as part of his research to kill cockroaches. His desk is cluttered with glassware and bug specimens, alongside a bulletin board covered in news clippings, biology schematics, scrawled notes, and eyes clipped from pictures . To top it off, the player gets to see this up close thanks to Roger having been turned into a roach by a mysterious locket .
• Baldur's Gate II : The first dungeon (known as "Chateau Irenicus" in the community) has "pickled" people in jars, rampant clones, a lightning generator, portals to other dimensions and other crazy contraptions, and a horde of duergar serving as Igors . The only difference with a traditional mad science lab is that the owner is an Evil Sorcerer and all the contraptions are powered by magic. Half the protagonist's canonical party from the first game ends up Strapped to an Operating Table , and not everyone walks away...
• Castlevania : Dracula tends to maintain at least one in each game, complete with all the glass containers, arcing electrical devices, and operating tables typical of the trope. It's usually where Frankenstein's Monster and other artificial monsters are created and fought.
• City of Villains : The base editor has all requisite mad science lab items, with classic items ranging from operating tables to Jacob's ladders of various sizes to organs in jars (ranging from preserved to rotted), and more modern items like microscopes, X-ray machines, and LCD monitors.
• In the original game , Dr. Neo Cortex has a sinister tower castle. To the top, his lab, which is shown in the intro cutscene, contains his Cortex Vortex , N. Brio 's Evolvo-Ray, and countless cages where a lot of marsupials are fearfully waiting for their turn to come. The Lab level has shades of this too, with its electric ray traps and its Blob Monsters who come out of nowhere.
• Crash Team Racing : N. Gin Labs is a big homage to labs and factory levels from the first two games, having one section where you turn around the Evolvo-Ray, radioactive barrels as a trap, and a big corridor where you can constantly boost.
• Deus Ex : A large number of them exist. Somewhat justified in that several factions are technocratic cabals who see "technology alone as a source of political power", and some of them are on your side . Still, applies mainly to scientists serving the Big Bad .
• Fallout: New Vegas : Old World Blues : The Big MT (Big Empty) is a non-OSHA compliant research facility run by Mad Scientist brains in jars . Both this and the main game have chemistry sets where you can craft drugs .
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream : AM builds a mock-up of a Nazi death camp for the character Nimdok to explore. One part of it includes a bunker containing a laboratory that fits this trope per the World War II setting, with implements from a teletype, a morphing creature in a bell jar, and a Golem made from steel and clay. It's also significant by the fact that Nimdok himself once performed experiments here alongside Dr. Mengele. Some of them included genetic manipulation and a youth serum , which is how AM kept Nimdok and four other humans alive for 109 years, and warped one of them into a mutant just for fun .
• Insanity : There's one of these labs located in the basement of the Murai mansion, belonging to Shigeki Murai, the Mad Scientist patriarch of the Murai family , where he carries out his experiments in an attempt to resurrect the dead . It's not too creepy or bizarre-looking... well, except for the over-sized cages and the human corpses .
• Killing Floor 2 : Dr. Hans Volter has one underneath his manor in Switzerland, where it's implied he performs Zed -related experiments. The Descent map shows that it extends over a kilometer below the surface, with at least 11 different floors.
• Monster Lab : Mad Science Castle is, of course, Exactly What It Says on the Tin . You get no less than four laboratories, three that correspond with the three disciplines of mad science (mechanics, biology and alchemy) and a fourth where Lightning Can Do Anything .
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon : The whole Gouma-Den. Hosted by lovable lunatic Dr. Victor . Complete with virtually all of the accoutrements of the standard lab.
• The Room (Mobile Game) : The final area in The Room Two is a tower on an island belonging to Professor de Montfaucon, set up in his research to save his dying sister Lucy. His equipment ranges from bug specimens and stimulating a hand with electricity , to the Null and a still-living heart . Lucy died before he could complete his research.
• Shovel Knight : The Explodatorium, domain of Plague Knight , is a place chock full of oversized labwear, exploding rats, flamethrowers, barrels full of boiling chemicals and scientists all trying to further chemical warfare.
• In The Sims 2 , the aptly-names Beaker family have one in their house, complete with a cell in the basement to keep their test subject in
• Stay Tooned! : Dr. Pickles has a couple of places replete with items of this trope, some of which can be interacted with. Dr. Pickles: Will you help me with mein experiment?
• The Ultimate Haunted House : One of these can be found, in the house's basement, belonging to Dr. Synthesis . You can use it to create a monster of your own, or even use parts found in the house to put together the Ultimate Monster .
• Wolfchild : The fourth world has Wolfchild entering the CHIMERA labs hidden beneath the hidden island temple. The area features People Jars , conveyor belts and large vats of presumably mutagenic substances used by CHIMERA to build their army.
• World of Warcraft : The Forsaken apparently discovered this trope in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, as their bases in Northrend tend to be full of traditional Mad Scientist equipment like Tesla coils, Jacob's ladders, and mechanical arms that move vials of glowing chemicals around.
• Evil Plan : Doctor Kinesis has a multi-level lab, complete with minions and a vat of "acid".
• Sparks — the setting's name for pathological mad scientist — tend to feel an active compulsion to keep at least one handy laboratory stocked with assorted mechanical and/or surgical tools, chemical reagents, interesting specimens and past experiments in jars, and a metal bed with leather straps for holding uncooperative test subjects.
• Castle Heterodyne has quite a lot of them, so that every Spark in the family can perform their own experiments without getting in each other's way. And so they don't have to drag the bodies far when the urge strikes to experiment on, say, an erstwhile guest. Agatha: That's horrible! Moloch: [dragging a body] I think it shows respect for the working man.
• In the novel Agatha H. and the Airship City (an expanded prose version of the first few comic volumes), Agatha asks Gil why he needs four labs aboard Castle Wulfenbach. He replies that his father has forty-three plus two ground-based facilities, so by comparison he's a model of efficiency. And that's not counting all the other labs on Castle Wulfenbach that the Baron set up for his employees, one of which is labeled "Lab Full of Exploding Things #5".
• Narbonic is all about Mad Scientists . If you don't have the Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks around, you fail to grasp the principles behind mad science.
• Sluggy Freelance : Riff rents out some tunnels to act as his secret underground lab. At least when Minion Master's not using it as his "Domicile of Evil".
• Tales Of Gnosis College : Professor Joseph Corwin houses his Apsinthion Device, a tank with a tentacle monster, and in impressive amount of weird glassware in a mad scientist's laboratory located in a derelict red-brick brewery that rather resembles an old-fashioned castle.
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog : Dr. Horrible seems to have one of these in his kitchen.
• Doctor Steel has one, seen on his website and in his videos, located on a mysterious secret island in the Pacific.
• KateModern : Precious Blood : The Science Lab is a mazelike underground nuclear bunker in which the Order carried out gory "research". LifesBlood Labs , and specifically Maggie's "magical place filled with wonders".-->
• Biker Mice from Mars : Dr. Karbunkle has a pretty spacious lab, which includes, among others things, his transporter.
• Dexter's Laboratory is a little light on the flatware, but even so he occasionally carries around a beaker. More often, he can be seen endlessly turning a nut with a wrench, against a background of computer banks, et al.
• Futurama : Mostly averted with Professor Farnsworth's lab, which is usually surprisingly sparse, with only one piece of equipment at a time, although in one episode he's shown to have about a dozen different doomsday devices tucked away.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) : Man-at-Arms has a big and impressive lab (good for those trademark Filmation long, slow pans), although it's not at all sinister-looking, since he's a nice guy.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends : In " The Great Rainbow Caper ", the gizmonks' base is essentially a giant laboratory filled with complicated machines in various states of completion, caged test subjects and exotic animals, and assorted trappings of mad science.
• " Feeling Pinkie Keen ": Twilight Sparkle's basement is shown to be filled with complex sensory apparati, tubes and bottles of colorful bubbling liquid, racks of test tubes, bookshelves, and giant tubing and machines of unclear purpose, with many of the larger pieces having tree roots wound around them.
• " It's About Time ": Twilight has a second laboratory slash observation room in her attic, this one featuring a number of large, complex telescopes alongside abstruse graphs and piles of loose documents.
• Rick and Morty : It's revealed in season 2 that Rick built one in the garage, causing Beth and Jerry to have a $6,000 electric bill. It appears in later episodes being used to work Rick's various projects of the day.
• SWAT Kats : Dr. Viper's laboratory, seen in " The Giant Bacteria ", is pretty impressive to behold, featuring retorts, racks of test tubes, flasks, beakers and even a microscope that for some reason has smoke pouring out of the eyepiece. Interestingly, production notes called for even more chemistry equipment to be seen, but for some reason the animators didn't get the message.
• Tiny Toon Adventures : Parodied in " Hare-Raising Night ". There's a panning shot of what appears to be Dr. Gene Splicer's laboratory, with a bunch of spiraling glass tubing and oddly-shaped chemistry equipment (flasks, beakers, etc.) in the foreground... only for the pan to continue and reveal it's just a painting, titled "Dad's Place". Dr. Splicer's actual laboratory is a surprisingly mundane office building (the giant vat of "gene juice" aside).
• Pinky and the Brain : The titular mice, being uplifted lab mice , naturally have Acme Labs as their home/base of operations. While the scientists there perform subpar experiments, Brain puts the equipment and resources to more ambitious use in his endeavors to take over the world.
• Xiaolin Showdown : Jack Spicer has a slightly more detailed laboratory than Dexter, but again, much more often computer-y than chemistry-set based.

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11,241--> Report

9 evil medical experiments

Many evil medical experiments have been conducted in the name of science, here are nine of the most horrific.

Separating triplets

Nazi medical experiments, japan's unit 731, the "monster study", the burke and hare murders, surgical experiments on slaves, guatemala syphilis study, the tuskegee study, additional resources:, related links:, bibliography:.

Throughout history a number of evil experiments have been carried out in the name of science. We all know the stereotype of the mad scientist, often a villain in popular culture. Yet in real-life, while science often saves lives, sometimes scientists commit horrific crimes in order to achieve results.

Some are ethical mistakes,  lapses of judgement made by people convinced  they're doing the right thing. Other times, they're pure evil. Here are nine of the worst experiments on human subjects in history.

In the 1960s and 1970s , clinical psychologists led by Peter Neubauer ran a secret experiment in which they separated twins and triplets from each other and adopted them out as singlets. The experiment, said to have been partly funded by the National Institute of Mental Health , came to light when three identical triplet brothers accidentally found each other in 1980. They had no idea they had siblings.

David Kellman, one of the triplets, felt anger towards the experiment: ''We were robbed of 20 years together,'' said Kellman in the Orlando Sentinel article. His brother, Edward Galland died by suicide in 1995 at his home in Maplewood, New Jersey, according to the LA Times .

The child psychiatrists who headed up the study — Peter Neubauer and Viola Bernard — showed no remorse, according to news reports, going as far as saying they thought they were doing something good for the kids, separating them so they could develop their individual personalities, said Bernard, according to Quillette . As for what Neubauer learned from his secret "evil" experiment, that's anyone's guess, as the results of the controversial study are being stored in an archive at Yale University, and they can't be unsealed until 2066, NPR reported in 2007 . Neubauer published some of his findings in a 1996 book, Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality , primarily concerning his son. According to Psychology today, as of 2021, some of Dr Viola Bernard's papers have become viewable at Columbia University .

Director Tim Wardle chronicled the lives of the triplets in the film " Three Identical Strangers ," which debuted at Sundance 2018.

Perhaps the most infamous evil experiments of all time were those carried out by Josef Mengele, an SS physician at Auschwitz during the Holocaust . Mengele combed the incoming trains for twins upon which to experiment, hoping to prove his theories of the racial supremacy of Aryans. Many died in the process. He also collected the eyes of his dead "patients," according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum .

The Nazis used prisoners to test treatments for infectious diseases and chemical warfare. Others were forced into freezing temperatures and low-pressure chambers for aviation experiments, according to the Jewish Virtual Library . Countless prisoners were subjected to experimental sterilization procedures. One woman, Ruth Elias, had her breasts tied off with string so SS doctors could see how long it took her baby to starve, according to an oral history collected by the Holocaust Museum . She eventually injected the child with a lethal dose of morphine to keep it from suffering longer.

Some of the doctors responsible for these atrocities were later tried as war criminals, but Mengele escaped to South America. He died in Brazil in 1979, of a heart attack, his final years spent lonely and depressed according to The Guardian .

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese Imperial Army conducted biological warfare and medical testing on civilians, mostly in China . Led by General Shiro Ishii, the lead physician at UNIT 731,  the death  toll of these brutal experiments is unknown, but as many as 200,000 may have died, estimates Historian Sheldon H Harris according to a 1995 New York Times report .

Numerous diseases were studied in order to determine their potential use in warfare. Among them were plague, anthrax , dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid and cholera, according to a paper by Dr Robert K D Peterson for Montana University . Numerous atrocities were committed including infecting wells with cholera and typhoid and spreading plague-ridden fleas across Chinese cities. 

According to Peterson the fleas were dropped in clay bombs, which were dropped at a height of 200-300 meters and showed no trace. Prisoners were marched in freezing weather and then experimented on to determine the best treatment for frostbite. 

Former members of the unit have told media outlets that prisoners were dosed with poison gas, put in pressure chambers until their eyes popped out, and even dissected while alive and conscious. After the war, the U.S. government helped keep the experiments secret as part of a plan to make Japan a cold-war ally, according to the Times report.

It was not until the late 1990's that Japan first acknowledged the existence of the unit and not until 2018 that the names of thousands of members of the Unit were disclosed, according to The Guardian . 

In 1939, speech pathologists at the University of Iowa set out to prove their theory that stuttering was a learned behavior caused by a child's anxiety about speaking. Unfortunately, the way they chose to go about this was to try to induce stuttering in orphans by telling them they were doomed to start stuttering in the future.

The researchers sat down with children at the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphans' Home and told them they were showing signs of stuttering and shouldn't speak unless they could be sure that they would speak right. The experiment didn't induce stuttering, but it did make formerly normal children anxious, withdrawn and silent.

Future Iowa pathology students dubbed the study, "the Monster Study," according to a 2003 New York Times article on the research. Three surviving children and the estates of three others eventually sued Iowa and the university. In 2007, Iowa settled for a total of $925,000.

Until the 1830s, the only legally available bodies for dissection by anatomists were those of executed murderers. Executed murderers being a relative rarity, many anatomists took to buying bodies from grave robbers — or doing the robbing themselves. “Body snatching as a ‘professional’ occupation didn’t really start to take shape until the end of the 18th century” Suzie Lennox, the author of Bodysnatchers: Digging Up the Untold Stories of Britain's Resurrection Men  told All About History in an interview “up till then the students and anatomists would have carried out their own raids in graveyards, acquiring cadavers as and when they could”.

Edinburgh boarding house owner William Hare and his friend William Burke found a way to deliver fresh corpses to Edinbrugh's anatomy tables without ever actually stealing a body. From 1827 to 1828, the two men smothered more than a dozen lodgers at the boarding house  and sold their bodies to anatomist Robert Knox, according to Mary Roach's " Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers " (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003). Knox apparently didn't notice (or didn't care) that the bodies his newest suppliers were bringing him were suspiciously fresh, Roach wrote.

Burke was later hanged for his crimes, and the case spurred the British government to loosen the restrictions on dissection. "The scandal led to the Anatomy Act of 1832 which made greater numbers of cadavers legally available to schools" Maclolm McCallum, the curator of the Edinburgh Anatomical Museum told All About History in an interview. "If you died in an asylum or hospital, and had no relatives or means to cover your funeral costs, your body would go to the schools for dissection. Crucially, the institutions which were providing the cadavers only supplied them to anatomy schools that were associated with teaching hospitals".

The father of modern gynecology, J. Marion Sims, gained much of his fame by doing experimental surgeries (sometimes several per person) on slave women, according to The Atlantic . Sims remains a controversial figure to this day, because the condition he was treating in the women, vesico-vaginal fistula, caused terrible suffering. Women with fistulas, a tear between the vagina and bladder, were incontinent and were often rejected by society.

Sims performed the surgeries without anesthesia , in part because anesthesia had only recently been discovered, and in part because Sims believed the operations were "not painful enough to justify the trouble," as he said in alecture according to NPR .

Arguments still rage as to whether Sims' patients would have consented to the surgeries had they been entirely free to choose. Nonetheless, wrote University of Alabama social work professor Durrenda Ojanuga in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 1993 , Sims "manipulated the social institution of slavery to perform human experimentations, which by any standard is unacceptable." In 2018, a statue of Sims was removed in response to the ongoing controversy, according to The Guardian . 

Many people erroneously believe that the government deliberately infected the Tuskegee participants with syphilis, which was not the case. But the work of professor Susan Reverby recently exposed a time when the U.S.  Public Health Service researchers did just that, according to Wellesley College . Between 1946 and 1948, Reverby found, the U.S. and Guatemalan governments co-sponsored a study involving the deliberate infection of 1,500 Guatemalan men, women and children with syphilis according to The Guardian .

The study was intended to test chemicals to prevent the spread of the disease. According to ​​ Michael A. Rodriguez in a 2013 paper; "The experiments were not conducted in a sterile clinical setting in which bacteria that cause STDs were administered in the form of a pin prick vaccination or a pill taken orally. The researchers systematically and repeatedly violated profoundly vulnerable individuals, some in the saddest and most despairing states, and grievously aggravated their suffering" Those who got syphilis were given penicillin as a treatment, Reverby found, but the records she uncovered indicate no follow-up or informed consent by the participants. On Oct. 1, 2010, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a joint statement apologizing for the experiments , according to The Guardian .

The most famous lapse in medical ethics in the United States lasted for 40 years. In 1932, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Public Health Service launched a study on the health effects of untreated syphilis in black men. 

The researchers tracked the progression of the disease in 399 black men in Alabama and also studied 201 healthy men , telling them they were being treated for "bad blood." In fact, the men never got adequate treatment, even in 1947 when penicillin became the drug of choice to treat syphilis. It wasn't until a 1972 newspaper article exposed the study to the public eye that officials shut it down, according to the official Tuskegee site.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo , now professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University , set out to test the "nature of human nature," to answer questions such as "What happens when you put good people in evil situations?" How he went about answering his human nature questions was and is thought by many to have been less than ethical. He set up a prison and paid college students to play guards and prisoners, who inevitably seemed to transform into abusive guards and hysterical prisoners. The two-week experiment was shut down after just six days because things turned chaotic fast. "In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress," Zimbardo stated, according to Times Higher Education . The guards, pretty much from the get-go, treated the prisoners awfully, humiliating them by stripping them naked and spraying their bodies with delousing chemicals and generally harassing and intimidating them, according to the Stanford Prison Experiment site

Turns out, according to a report on Medium , a news publication, in June 2018, the guards didn't become aggressive on their own — Zimbardo encouraged the abusive behavior — and some of the prisoners faked their emotional breakdowns. For instance, Douglas Korpi, a volunteer prisoner said that he faked a meltdown to get released early so he could study for an exam.

Even so, the Stanford Prison Experiment has been the basis of psychologists' and even historians' understanding of how even healthy people can become so evil when placed in certain situations, according to the American Psychological Association .

For more concerning the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, check out the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum . The New York Times original 1995 report on the events that occured at Manchu 731 is available here . Those interested in the Stanford Prison Experiment should check out the experiments website .

• The Holocaust: Facts and Remembrance
• The Top 10 Mad Scientists
• Amy Kaufman: " The surreal, sad story behind the acclaimed new doc ‘Three Identical Strangers " Los Angeles Times, July 1 2018
• Nancy L Segal: " Shame and Silence: The LWS Twin Studies Revisited " Quillette, 26th Sep 2021
• Holocaust Encyclopedia: Josef Mengele
• Dachau: High Altitude Experiments, Jewish Virtual Library
• Jan Rocha, " Mengele Letters Reveal Life Ended in Pain and Poverty ", The Guardian, 23 Nov 2004
• Nicholas D Kristoff: " Unmasking Horror - A Special Report " The New York Times, March 17th 1995
• Dr Robert K D Peterson: "Japan’s Role in Developing Biological Weapons in World War II and its Effect on Contemporary Relations between Asian Countries " Montana State University
• Justin McCurry: " Unit 731: Japan discloses details of notorious chemical warfare division " The Guardian, 17th April 2018
• Gretchen Reynolds: " The Stuttering Doctor's 'Monster Study ", New York Times, March 16th 2003
• Mary Roach's " Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers " (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003)
• Sarah Zhang: " The Surgeon Who Experimented on Slaves ", The Atlantic, April 18th 2018
• Camila Domonoske: " Father Of Gynecology,' Who Experimented On Slaves, No Longer On Pedestal In NYC " NPR, April 17th 2018
• Durrenda Ojanuga: " The Medical Ethics of the 'Father of Gynaecology', Dr J Marion Sims ' Journal of Medical Ethics, 1993
• Nadja Sayej: " J Marion Sims: controversial statue taken down but debate still rages ", The Guardian, Sat 21st April 2018
• Rory Caroll, " Guatemala victims of US syphilis study still haunted by the 'devil's experiment ", The Guardian, 8th June 2011
• Michael A Rodriguez, National Library of Medicine
• Chris McGreal: " US says sorry for 'outrageous and abhorrent' Guatemalan syphilis tests ", The Guardian, 1st October 2010
• Matthew Reisz, " Re-engaging with the Stanford Prison Experiment ". Times Higher Education, Sep 26th 2018

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Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

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Meet 7 Real-Life Mad Scientists That Are Crazier Than Any Movie Villain

Shiro ishii: the barbaric doctor behind unit 731 in world war ii japan.

Wikimedia Commons Shiro Ishii led horrific experiments leading up to and during World War II.

Often compared to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, Shiro Ishii oversaw countless horrific human experiments in World War II Japan.

Ishii had been a member of Imperial Japan’s Army Medical Corps when he was first inspired to pursue appalling methods of germ warfare, which the Geneva Protocol had banned in 1925. As an esteemed general and scientist with all the right credentials, Ishii eventually took over Unit 731 — the government’s disturbing biological and chemical warfare unit.

Believed to have been set up around 1935 in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, Unit 731 became the testing grounds of some of the most inhumane experiments in modern history. Ishii insisted that the only way they’d make scientific progress was by using civilians as test subjects.

Xinhua via Getty Images A bacteriological trial being conducted on a young captive in November 1940.

From frostbite experiments and high-pressure chamber tests to intentional infection of syphilis and vivisections on conscious subjects, Ishii’s experiments were all heralded as necessary acts to bolster the army and pinpoint any potential weaknesses in its enemies.

Not even unborn children were spared. Female prisoners were often raped and forcibly impregnated. The victim would then be exposed to chemicals, purposefully infected with diseases, or fatally shot, only for scientists to cut the woman open and assess the state of the fetus inside.

Meanwhile, the “Maruta” division infected thousands of subjects with various diseases and removed the victims’ organs just to study the effects of each illness without the hassle of decomposition. Arms were amputated and reattached to opposite sides, gangrene was intentionally induced in healthy body parts, and bare hands were subjected to frostbite.

Perhaps most horrific was Ishii’s inhumane reasoning behind these tests. As an army doctor, one of his main goals was the development of battlefield treatment techniques that he could use on Japanese troops — after learning just how much the human body could handle before it collapsed.

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The Metamorphosis of the Mad Scientist

An institution of horror movies, this iconic character has evolved along with our views on science itself..

Back at the 2024 Oscars, the true winner wasn’t an actor or actress or director. It wasn’t even (just) Ken. It was an archetype. The two films that took home the most Academy Awards were the atomic-bomb drama Oppenheimer and the comedy Poor Things , and both pictures rode to that ceremony on the backs of one of cinema’s most enduring characters: the mad scientist. Despite their wild differences, the films’ joint success highlighted our timeless fascination with eccentric creators and the monsters that emerge from their labs. The Oscar went to (opens envelope) our nervous relationship with technology.

With all due respect to WWII dramas and Emma Stone satires, no genre has done more to unleash the mad scientist upon the world than the horror film. They are one of scary movies’ most famous characters, just behind the Final Girl and doomed quarterbacks. The two most iconic images of the silent era come from Metropolis (1927) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), both chilling stories about the havoc of evil doctors. A century later, the mad scientist continues to haunt our movies, even if the inventions themselves do not. “Today, many of the things that would once have seemed like horror-story fodder are scientific reality,” noted The Atlantic in 2014 . “But still, as the boundaries of human knowledge are continually pushed, the trope of the mad scientist endures.”

It may have endured, but the meaning of the mad scientist has evolved as much as our views on science itself. A look at American horror’s most iconic mad scientists reveals a surprisingly volatile relationship between horror and academia in the United States. It’s a relationship that endures to the modern day. We may be living in an age of reason, but horror fans aren’t motivated by reason. After all, what reasonable person would pay money to willingly scare the crap out of themselves for fun?

“He succeeds in impressing upon one the earnestness and also the sanity of the scientist.” This was, ironically, how a 1931 New York Times review first described cinema’s most notorious mad scientist: the titular doctor in James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). Since the publication of that review, that “sane” doctor has become visual shorthand for experimental madness. But the “earnestness” hits on something critical about these first cinematic mad scientists. They were driven by a devout—if twisted—passion to harness the power of God. Sure, the passion came from different impulses. For Dr. Frankenstein, it was hubris (“I created it! I made it with my own hands!”). For the Invisible Man (1933), it was greed (“I realized the power I held: the power to rule, to make the world grovel at my feet.”). And for Dr. Moreau in 1932’s Island of Lost Souls , it was to freak out his dinner guests with weird questions (“Mr. Parker, do you know what it means to feel like God?”). But each of them were blurring the lines between science and religion. Made by filmmakers born when cinema felt like a kind of alchemy, this early era of mad scientists reflects a time where, for many Americans, science itself was considered a bit mad.

And in the 1930s, this was against the rules. Sometimes literally. Frankenstein was released just six years after the Scopes Monkey Trial put an academic on the stand for teaching evolution. According to horror historian Karina Wilson, this fear of science bled into movie houses, turning the mad scientist into a star. “That’s why Victor Frankenstein is seen as such a hubristic evil figure,” Wilson told NPR in 2020 . “He’s not the hero of the movie. He’s the one who sets that terrible thing into motion.” So concerned was Universal about rocking the religious boat (or Ark?), they insisted on adding a warning to Frankenstein ’s opening. (Incidentally, that warning was written by a young studio staff writer named John Huston. Based on everything I’ve read about Huston, penning something that cautious must have seriously pissed him off.)

Horror’s relationship to science grew more complicated as America marched into the 1950s and ’60s. An era of both postwar industrial optimism and the terror of Sputnik, scary movies became less eager to portray scientists as simple maniacs. Instead, the Eisenhower era’s most terrifying horror films, motivated by Cold War nuclear anxiety, were the ones where the monsters (or the Living Dead or the Body Snatchers) seemed to emerge from nature as suddenly and violently as a mushroom cloud. Japan’s nuanced Godzilla (1954) tried to remind us that those mushroom clouds were man-made. But U.S. distributors notoriously re-edited many of those pesky Hiroshima allusions from the domestic cut, because, America. In this period, scientists with plans “just crazy enough to work” were (momentarily) promoted from madmen to America’s “only hope.” (Oppenheimer himself got the cover of Time for “winning the war.”) In Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), for example, the dashing and shirtless Dr. David Reed (Richard Carlson) saves his companions using his genius in…monster fish science? His expertise not only reveals the terrifying Gill-man’s weakness, it cements Reed’s status as cinema’s sexiest ichthyologist.

Of course, marine biology wasn’t truly sexy until 1975, when Jaws became one of the highest-grossing horror movies (or movie movies) of the decade. One of the blockbuster’s heroes is Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), an oceanographer whose scruffy beard suggests a young academic straight from Berkeley. Jaws sailed into theaters in the wake of Lyndon Johnson’s Higher Education Act, when a record number of Baby Boomers flocked to college campuses. Suddenly, the laboratories and libraries so gothically portrayed in earlier horror films were part of America’s everyday curriculum. Combined with the radical culture of 1970s college life, fear of progress (scientific or otherwise) now seemed absurd, close-minded, and, worst of all, lame. It’s telling that two of the most famous mad scientists of this period, Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein (1974) and Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), are from satires. In a decade that effectively kicked off with the arrest of the Manson Family and ended with the arrest of Ted Bundy, mad scientists were a welcome escapist fantasy. Audiences were now afraid of Michael Myers from John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). He may move like a monster created by Dr. Frankenstein, but he scared ’70s audiences precisely because we knew he was not.

As this ’70s attitude butted heads with the Reagan-era capitalism of the 1980s, horror films discovered a new type of villain, this one motivated by profit. The mad scientist of James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) isn’t a scientist at all. It’s not even a person. It’s the faceless Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the business funding the film’s cosmic expedition. Weyland didn’t create the titular xenomorph that eats most of Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) team, but its capitalist motives to harness the aliens for money feel no less deranged than those of Dr. Moreau. In the Gordon Gekko years, mad science was simply a business venture. It’s a perfectly ’80s detail that the closest character Aliens has to a mad scientist is Paul Reiser dressed like a space-yuppie. “Those two specimens are worth millions to the bio-weapons division,” Reiser’s character says of the aliens. Apparently greed is good, even if deadly facehugging aliens are not.

A similar corporate overlord funds the work of Dr. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) in David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), his teleportation research backed by the demanding Bartock Science Industries. Brundle admirably resists his investors, but his motivations include an equally-1980s trend: fame. In Cronenberg’s own MTV-era twist on the mad scientist, Brundle is not the typically reclusive genius. In fact, he welcomes the media. Made in a year when the closest thing we had to a science superstar was Mr. Wizard, The Fly feels predictive of our future wave of vain, self-proclaimed “disruptors.” It’s why Brundle allows a journalist (Geena Davis) to chronicle his research, why he asks her to videotape his teleportations with a big silver camcorder, and why he’s always flashing a red-carpet grin. Then again, he could just be grinning because, well, he’s played by Jeff Goldblum.

Computers exploded in the 1990s, so it’s surprising there weren’t dozens of horror films invoking mad computer scientists. This feels less like a failure of imagination than a reflection of the decade’s digital optimism. It’s hard to believe in our doomscrolling present, but in the early ’90s, people were genuinely excited about rapidly advancing technology (an enthusiasm that contributed to a dot-com crash at the decade’s end). A notorious exception is 1992’s Lawnmower Man , in which mad scientist Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Pierce Brosnan) conducts underground virtual-reality experiments on a simple-minded groundskeeper, turning his subject into an all-powerful cyber-god. A flop so maligned that Stephen King sued to have his name removed from it, Lawnmower Man is today most known for its primitive CGI depictions of virtual reality that answered the question: “What if your Trapper Keeper was a movie?”

If the mad scientists of the 1990s weren’t creating tech-demons, they were at least embracing the tech boom’s exhilarating attitude. In the underappreciated release Flatliners (1990), a group of medical students secretly conduct experiments into the afterlife by clinically killing and reviving each other. Unlike previous, grim forays into mad science, however, this macabre experiment is presented as an act of thrilling, Gen-X rebellion. The Dr. Frankensteins of Flatliners are played by the decade’s coolest young stars, including Keifer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, and Julia Roberts (as an all-too-rare female mad scientist). It’s a lineup that makes Flatliners the Empire Records of challenging Natural Law. They’re radical, but in the skateboarder sense of the word. “Philosophy failed. Religion failed. Now it’s up to the physical sciences,” shouts Kiefer Sutherland’s med student, amped up on youthful angst. “Today is a good day to die,” he adds, sounding less like a scientist and more like Bodhi from 1991’s Point Break .

In the last decade, tech CEOs finally got the horror villain they deserved (sorry, Tim Robbins in 2001’s Antitrust ). But after actual nightmares like Cambridge Analytica’s data mining, Russian social media influence, and Elon Musk, you know, just in general, our greatest scientific threats seemed like the selfish, politically motivated, and craven whims of the creators themselves. In Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014), Oscar Isaac is Nathan Bateman, an enigmatic tech billionaire who invents lifelike female robots. The film’s creature is an AI (Alicia Vikander), but the threat is Nathan’s obsession, which feels less like Frankenstein wanting to create life, and more like a predatory man eager to control women—an impulse confirmed in the film’s most iconic scene, where Isaac programs one of his female robots to join him in an impromptu disco dance. Three years later, Jordan Peele’s breakout Get Out (2017) would shift the mad scientist’s evil gaze toward race. In the film, Dr. Armitage (Bradley Whitford) secretly carries on his family’s sinister science of hijacking the brains of black kidnapping victims. Even the movie’s “sunken place,” seemingly created by Catherine Keener’s demented psychiatrist, is a form of mad science. Instead of a laboratory, all she needed was a teaspoon.

When theaters closed in the early days of our all-too-real horror that was the pandemic, back in March 2020, the number-one movie in America was The Invisible Man , a remake of the foundational 1933 mad scientist film. It’s a triumph that both versions were hits, but their depictions of the mad scientist are strikingly different. In the original, Claude Rains is driven mad by his invisibility serum. But in the 2020 remake, starring Elisabeth Moss as a terrorized wife, the Invisible Man was already an abusive husband long before he ever disappeared, a scenario even more terrifying. Does science drive men mad, or do mad men use science to weaponize their worst impulses? For horror films, maybe the scariest thing is that it’s both. The mad scientist deviously shifts its meaning. Like any great horror scare, we don’t know what angle they will attack from. It’s not a static character. To quote the original mad scientist: It’s alive.

Pat Cassels is an Emmy-winning writer, actor, and comedian who has worked at TBS’s Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and CollegeHumor. He has contributed to The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, Slate , and The New York Times Book Review , and received the Writers’ Guild of America award in 2020 and 2022.

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• Activities for Kids

70+ Mad Scientist Experiments for Freaky Deaky Fun

The leaves are turning colors, sweater weather is upon us and, drumroll, please … fall is here. Before spending countless hours clicking through Pinterest and Instagram for inspo, start your holiday celebration with a few crazy-cool science experiments. Yep, these all-out awesome ideas are straight out of a mad scientists lab! Scroll down to find your favorite.

11 Bubbling Potions

They bubble. They fizz. And they're all kinds of ooey, gooey fun. What better way to play the role of the mad scientist than with 11 different potion-filled experiments? These ideas include everything from fizzy fairy potions and witch's brew to rainbow concoctions and glittering galaxies. Read more about how to mix up your very own potion lab here . 

6 Ways to Get Glowing

Halloween science? Your kiddo can get glowing with these cool, but kind-of-creepy mad science experiments. Turn out the lights, tell a not-so-scary ghost story and watch as these awesome explorations glow brightly in the night. Learn more about creating all things that glow with six, easy how-to ideas and instructions . 

35 Experiments Like Exploding Pumpkins

By now you've probably parented for long enough to have tried the good ol' baking soda and vinegar volcano more than a few times. This fall-themed take on the classic, is a science exploration that will make a mess in the most magnificent way possible! Click here for the how-to, plus got 35 more madly amazing experiments to keep your laboratory full of fun. 

8 Disgusting Ways to Play with Science

From spit to boogers to germs, we've got eight oozy, gross science experiments we guarantee they will love. 

Super-Slimy Stuff

We all know that slime-making is THE activity of choice for many, maaaany kids. Hey, it's fun all year-round. But when Halloween rolls around, slime science kicks up to another (decidedly creepier) level. Whether your kids are into fluffy slime, chalkboard slime, glowing slime, glitter slime or just about any other crazy concoction, you can find a bounty of recipes from Little Bins for Little Hands here . 

Pumpkin Science

It's fall and Halloween is right around the corner. And that means pumpkins are plentiful. Along with painting, carving and otherwise decorating your pumpkins, you can use the squashy gourds as part of majorly mad science experiments. You'll find several tutorials for pumpkin science activities over at iGame Mom . 

11 Freaky Fall Favorites

Science for the season equals fab fall fun! So get ready for your mini mad scientist to make a major mess (in a totally educational way, of course). Your science-loving kid can experiment with oil and water, learn about tissue paper color transfers, get ooey gooey with a pumpkin's insides, make perfectly messy pumpkin-canons and so, so, so much more with these 11 autumn explorations , activities and science ideas. 

Mad Mason Jars

Okay, okay, so we all kind of equate mason jar activities with the cute crafts on Pinterest. But you can use these jars for sooooooo much more. Forget about the crafty jar projects (at least for right now), and check out these, "slimy, squishy, super-cool experiments." Try these mason jar science experiments are activities anytime or add them to your Halloween party line-up!

RELATED STORIES

11 Awesome Autumn Science Experiments for Kids

6 Incredibly Easy Rainbow Science Experiments

7 Sun-Science Experiments to Make Your Day

It’s Alive! Gross (But Cool) Science Experiments for Kids

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Mad Science: Nine of the oddest experiments ever

By Reto Schneider

24 September 2008

(Image: jingkung, stock.xchng)

Reto Schneider has collected some of the most bizarre experiments conducted in the name of science for his book The Mad Science Book ( reviewed here ). Here he selects nine of his favourites.

1. Dogbot meets real Dog

In 2003, researchers from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris tried to find out whether dogs would accept Sony’s commercial dogbot AIBO as one of their own. The experiment resulted in a formal scientific publication, “Social behaviour of dogs encountering AIBO, an animal-like robot in a neutral and in a feeding situation” , and the insight that the answer is “no”.

Watch a video of the experiment

2. The psychonaut

To find out what would happen if the brain was cut off from all external stimuli, scientist John Lilly built the first sensory deprivation tank in 1954. Floating in warm water for hours in complete darkness and silence, Lilly began to experience vivid fantasies.

“These are too personal to relate publicly,” he reported later. The hallucinations of his test subjects were similarly difficult to categorize scientifically. This was one reason why his research did not take off.

Lilly later gave up scientific research and founded the firm Samadhi Tanks , which manufactured tanks for domestic use. Having became something of a New Age guru, he died in 2001.

One of the few scientific experiments honoured by Hollywood, Lilly’s work was the model for the 1980 film Altered States . To no one’s surprise, the real experiments were done with much less flashy equipment than that shown in the film. Lilly sometimes had to switch off the light himself and then climb, in complete darkness, into a tank, which was little more than an outsize bathtub.

Watch the title sequence of Altered States , which shows a sophisticated vertical tank that never actually existed

3. Psychology’s atom bomb

This is probably the most famous experiment ever not actually done. American market researcher James Vicary claimed that he had exposed the audience in a cinema in Fort Lee, NJ to the secret instructions “Eat Popcorn!” and “Drink Coke!” As a result, the sales of Coca-Cola in the cinema foyer increased by 18.1%, while those of popcorn rose by 57.5%.

Vicary later admitted that the whole story had been fabricated. But it stuck and became an urban myth .

Vicary’s experiment had its last major airing to date during the US Presidential elections of 2000, when in a TV advert promoting the Republican candidate George W Bush unseen by viewers, the word “RATS” was flashed up momentarily when a Democrat policy was mentioned. See the ad for yourself: the word appears at 0:25

4. Holidaying in a draught

Being a guinea pig for the British government’s Common Cold Unit in 1946 was very popular with students. They saw it as a cheap holiday: getting free accommodation in spacious flats fully equipped with books, games, radio and telephone, and spending your leisure time playing table tennis, badminton, or golf. You even got paid three shillings a day.

The students were instructed to maintain a distance of at least 9 metres from all unprotected persons, other than their flatmates. The unpleasant part of the experiment began when the participants had to spend half an hour in a draughty corridor after taking a hot bath, had to wear wet socks for the rest of the day, and were infected with nasal secretion from a cold sufferer.

To everyone’s surprise the experiments demonstrated that the common cold had nothing to do with cold temperatures.

Watch a (hilarious) film about the experiment

5. Remote control bullfight

Spanish neurologist Jose Delgado from Yale University was not only convinced that electrical stimulation of the brain was the key to understanding the biological bases of social behaviour: he was also prepared to prove his case in a rather risky fashion.

On a spring evening in 1964 he came face to face with Lucero, a 250-kilogram fighting bull owned by landowner Ramón Sánchez, who had granted Delgado the use of a small practice ring on his estate of La Almarilla in Córdoba for the experiment.

Lucero lumbered towards him. Delgado pressed a button on the remote control. The radio-controlled electrodes he had placed in the brain a few days before the experiment activated. This instantly dissipated the animal’s aggression – Lucero skidded to a halt and trotted off.

Watch a video of Delgado’s encounter with the bull

Delgado’s experiment was considered newsworthy enough to be published on the front page of the New York Times – ironically only one year after it was actually done.

6. The 28-hour day

At one time, one of the great unsolved mysteries of sleep research was whether the human sleep–wake rhythm of 24 hours was merely a habit, changeable at any time, or whether people had an internal, hard-wired body clock.

So sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman set out to find a location where there was no difference between day and night.

He found it in a 20-metre wide and 8-metre high rock chamber in the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, where he and his student Bruce Richardson decided to try out a 28-hour day. They would sleep for 9 hours, work for 10 hours and have 9 hours’ leisure time.

They spent 32 days in the cave. Richardson adapted to the new cycle after just a week. Kleitman, who was 20 years older, failed to adapt.

Watch some footage from the experiment

7. A year in bed

It sounds like the ideal job for couch potatoes: in January 1986, 11 men went to bed in Moscow, and didn’t get up for the next 370 days. They were washed lying down, and ate, read, watched television and wrote letters in a prone position.

At the time, this was the simplest method to simulate the effects of weightlessness on Earth. But the 370 days this study lasted went way beyond anything that had been done before.

In addition to the medical results, it had unintended consequences. Some marriages did not survive the strain, and one of the men fell in love with a researcher who was working on the project.

Each participant had been promised a car as compensation for his efforts. As former Cosmonaut and director of the study Boris Morukov says, “It was still the Soviet era then, and getting hold of a car wasn’t easy.” Only one man quit the experiment, after three months – he already owned a car.

8. The Doctor Fox Effect

The lecture that Myron L Fox delivered in 1970 to a crowd of assembled experts had an impressive enough title: “Mathematical game theory as applied to physician education”. His polished performance at the annual conference of the University of California School of Medicine’s further education program so impressed the audience that nobody noticed that he was an actor , who didn’t know the first thing about game theory.

All that Fox had done was to take a scholarly article on game theory and work up a lecture from it that was quite intentionally full of imprecise waffle, invented words and contradictory assertions.

The researchers behind the experiment – John Ware, Donald Naftulin and Frank Donnelly – wanted to find out whether a brilliant delivery technique could so completely bamboozle a group of experts that they overlooked the fact that the content was nonsense. The answer is: yes, it can.

At the beginning of the talk, Fox was nervous because he feared people would see through the ruse and recognise him. After all, he was the actor who played Dr. Benson , the vet who looked after the inspector’s dog, in Columbo . But the performance went so well that by the end he was confident enough to take questions from the audience.

A journalist later wrote: “If an actor makes a better teacher, why not a better congressman, or even a better President?” Ten years later Ronald Reagan was elected to the White House.

9. Urine in the web

In 1955, psychiatrists at the Friedmatt Sanatorium and Nursing Home in Basle, Switzerland were trying to find a way to diagnose schizophrenia. They fed urine concentrate from fifteen schizophrenics to spiders and compared the webs that they spun to those constructed by spiders that had been given researchers’ urine instead. No systematic differences were found.

However, the researchers found out one thing: concentrated urine “must taste extremely unpleasant, despite all the sugar that was added”. The spiders’ behaviour left no room for doubt: “After taking just a sip, the spiders exhibited a marked abhorrence for any further contact with this solution.”

Read the original paper (subscription required)

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The 21 Best Movies With Mad Scientists, Ranked

Exploring the unruly minds behind some of the most captivating cinematic tales, this thoughtfully curated list offers an exceptional selection of movies centered around mad scientists. Each film offers a distinct flavor of scientific mayhem, showcasing characters whose genius teeters on the edge of insanity. Handpicked by film enthusiasts and further refined through community votes, this compilation is sure to enthrall and provoke thought, fostering a deeper understanding of the allure and peril of unchecked scientific ambition.

Highlights from this list demonstrate the impressive range and diversity inherent in the mad scientist trope. Take Re-Animator , for instance, where Dr. Herbert West’s gruesome attempts at reanimating the dead challenge ethical boundaries with grotesque humor. Another standout is Frankenstein , with Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s unrestrained drive to create life leading to a cascade of moral quandaries and tragic outcomes. These films, among others, delve into complex themes such as mortality, ethics, and the human condition, making each viewing experience uniquely thought-provoking and engaging.

Moreover, navigating through this list is made even more convenient with our handy "Where to Watch" buttons. Whether you prefer Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Max, or Paramount+, finding and streaming these intriguing tales of scientific madness has never been easier. So sit back, delve into the eccentric world of mad scientists, and let our list guide you through some of the finest specimens in the genre, all available at your fingertips.

Young Frankenstein

How bonkers are these brainiacs:

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein , who humorously parodies his infamous ancestor’s work. His whimsical yet sincere dedication to reanimation brings a refreshing blend of humor to the mad scientist trope. The character strikes a balance between scientific ambition and human folly, making Young Frankenstein both intellectually engaging and delightfully funny. By satirizing the genre, Young Frankenstein pays homage to and reinvents the mad scientist narrative.

Plot Summary:

• Actors : Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn
• Released : 1974
• Directed by : Mel Brooks

Seth Brundle in The Fly , whose teleportation experiments take a horrifying turn, leading to his grotesque transformation. Brundle’s descent into mad science raises profound ethical and existential questions. His initial brilliance devolves into physical and psychological horror, exploring the catastrophic consequences of human ambition. The Fly’s use of body horror illustrates the toll of unchecked scientific curiosity, presenting a powerful story of frailty and hubris.

• Actors : Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel, Leslie Carlson
• Released : 1986
• Directed by : David Cronenberg

Bride of Frankenstein

Dr. Frankenstein, manipulated by the nefarious Dr. Pretorius, in Bride of Frankenstein . Their unholy alliance amplifies the allure and hazards of scientific curiosity. Pretorius’s influence propels Frankenstein back into mad science, crafting a mate for the Monster and enhancing the original story. The dynamic between these mad scientists intensifies Bride of Frankenstein’s tension and deepens its exploration of creation, companionship, and the dire consequences of defying natural laws.

• Actors : Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, O.P. Heggie
• Released : 1935
• Directed by : James Whale

From Beyond

Dr. Edward Pretorius and his assistant Dr. Crawford Tillinghast in From Beyond , whose experiments open a gateway to a parallel dimension. Their adventurous yet perilous scientific pursuits create palpable narrative tension and horror. The mad scientists’ journeys delve into themes of expanded perception and altered reality, pushing the envelope of human experience. Their obsession with forbidden realms deepens From Beyond's psychological and visceral fear, making their scientific madness the plot’s driving force.

• Actors : Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ted Sorel, Ken Foree, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon
• Directed by : Stuart Gordon

Eyes Without a Face

Dr. Génessier in Eyes Without a Face epitomizes the disturbing potential of mad science. His relentless quest to restore his daughter’s disfigured face through unconventional skin grafts drives Eyes Without a Face’s eerie atmosphere and suspenseful narrative. Génessier’s scientific endeavors blur the line between love and cruelty, adding emotional complexity to the horror. The mad scientist’s experiments probe deeply into themes of identity and medical ethics, enhancing Eyes Without a Face’s chilling impact.

• Actors : Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Édith Scob, Juliette Mayniel, François Guérin
• Released : 1959
• Directed by : Georges Franju

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show brings audacious flair to the mad scientist archetype. As a transvestite alien creating the “perfect” man, his flamboyant experiments serve as the plot’s heartbeat. Frank-N-Furter’s theatrical brilliance and madcap scientific pursuits make him a captivating character. Through extravagant musical numbers and lavish spectacle, The Rocky Horror Picture Show explores identity, sexuality, and scientific norms, making its mad scientist more than just a comic figure.

• Actors : Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien, Jonathan Adams
• Released : 1975
• Directed by : Jim Sharman

'Re-Animator' & 9 of the Most Unforgettable Mad Scientists in Horror History

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The 10 Best War Movies of All Time, Ranked According to Rotten Tomatoes

The transformers franchise passes major global box office milestone while ‘transformers one’ fizzles, the 10 worst movies that aren't even fun to watch, ranked.

The mad scientist remains a beloved trope in the horror genre. After all, what is more terrifying than a ridiculously intelligent scientist going under the knife on your mind and body – all in the name of sadistic experiments or driving the human race forward? Their victims go through terrifying transformations and heinous torture just for some crazed “results.”

RELATED: Body Horror, Neon Colors, Monsters, and Insanity: A List of Must-See Lovecraft Cinema

Watching these blood-thirsty laboratory dwellers lose themselves in their work is always a satisfying spiral into madness. These scientists come in all shapes and sizes, and with various levels of psychopathy. Some take a more humorous path down the road to wreaking havoc with a scalpel, while others are so cold-blooded that death would be a kinder act for their victims.

Howard Howe, 'Tusk' (2014)

Tusk begs the question: what would it be like to be completely transformed into an animal? Albeit, against his will, Wallace learns exactly what it's like to be a walrus, both in body in mind. The movie is a great example of a crazed scientist. Even though Howard Howe isn't technically a scientist, he is a retired seaman with a wild imagination.

In his attempt to make amends with a walrus that he claims had saved his life once at sea, Howard takes it upon himself to turn his visitor into his dead animal friend. He sews Wallace into a skin made of human flesh and attaches Wallace's own leg bones to his mouth as walrus tusks. He then conditions the young man to act like a walrus, so well in fact, that Wallace ends up in a zoo for the remainder of his life.

Victor Frankenstein, 'Frankenstein' (1931)

Dr. Frankenstein is the quintessential example of a mad scientist. Mary Shelley's version of derangement came in the form of a moral message by eliminating a deity in order to reach self-realization. In other words, Dr. Frankenstein stands for much more than just a scientist hellbent on creating a monster – he serves the purpose of behavior demonstration for the monster he made.

Frankenstein stands as an ethical lesson in science fiction, and his monster has become synonymous with horror and Halloween. Interestingly enough, the depiction of Dr. Frankenstein in the 1931 movie differs from the source material. The movie made him more menacing – instead of being ashamed of what he has created, he becomes drunk on power.

Herbert West, 'Re-Animator' (1985)

Herbert West is one of the most recognizable mad scientists in horror. Re-Animator follows an eccentric medical student as he hopes to cure death itself. He comes up with a concoction that can reanimate dead tissue, despite his friends and colleagues condemning his controversial work.

Herbert remains a beloved character in horror, not because of his vileness, but because of his humor and sincerity. It's hard not to fall in love with the character because he genuinely believes he is doing good, despite the zombies he ends up creating. While Re-Animator is one of H.P. Lovecraft's least favorite stories , the film became a cult classic thanks to its comically graphic consequences of trying to tamper with the natural process of life.

RELATED: From 'Alien' to 'Sunshine': Terrifying But Great Space Horror Movies

Barry Nyle, 'Beyond the Black Rainbow' (2010)

Beyond the Black Rainbow is more than just a psychedelic horror movie – it blends fascinating sci-fi elements with some of the most vividly stunning cinematography in film. The movie takes place in a future government-funded facility that experiments with therapy techniques and medicine for people wanting greater happiness.

Barry Nyle handles the daily operations of the facility and the second he steps onscreen, you know that he means business. The man struggles to maintain his sanity the longer that he stays in the facility, and he has become somewhat of a villain as he helps to keep Elena prisoner. It doesn't help that he also engaged with Dr. Arboria's experimental drug therapies for years – blistering his mind.

Dr. Génessier, 'Eyes Without a Face' (1960)

Eyes Without a Face is a classic French horror film that explores family trauma in a grotesquely bizarre way. Dr. Génessier is a plastic surgeon and father to a beautiful young woman. When she finds herself mutilated after a car accident, her dad vows to restore her beauty, even if that means luring young girls into his lab to steal the perfect new face for his daughter.

Dr. Génessier is a perfect example of a mad scientist with reasons that go beyond himself. In a way, his desire to help his daughter, no matter what the cost, is admirable. Unfortunately, no matter how much love is behind his desires, he is still a murderer.

Seth Brundle, 'The Fly' (1986)

The Fly is one of David Cronenberg's finest works. Much of this is due to Jeff Goldblum's brilliant portrayal of the crazed scientist, Seth Brundle. He perfectly encapsulates everything that is so beloved about mad scientists – he is handsome, charming, and realizes far too late how dangerous his experiments are.

Despite wanting to make the world a better place, Seth is no angel. He inevitably falls to his own arrogance and loses his sanity. After one of his experiments goes terribly wrong, Seth begins to transform into a human-fly hybrid. The only redeeming quality about Dr. Brundle is that he keeps his experimenting to himself.

Dean Armitage, 'Get Out' (2017)

Get Out is one of the best horror movies of the last five years and is a prime film for beginners to ease into the spooky genre . The movie is filled with horrific scenarios that revolve around race and has moral lessons that go far beyond most horror movies. And best of all, it has a sinister villain to hate and root against: Dean Armitage.

Dean is less of a typical mad scientist than most. He doesn't have a deranged look on his face, bulging eyes, or wildly messy hair. What he does have though, is a maddeningly terrifying desire to give brain-imprinting surgeries to people who want to “feel” what it's like to have different physical characteristics. What makes him so sinister is that his surgeries actually work.

RELATED: Funny Horror Movies That Will Scare You and Make You Laugh in Equal Measure

Josef Heiter, 'The Human Centipede' (2009)

Josef Heiter is one of the most grotesquely unnerving mad scientists in horror, and for good reason. He enjoys sewing people's mouths and bodies together. When the plot of The Human Centipede was first released to the public, people were either disgusted or intrigued, and it's hard to tell if they ever overlapped.

This body horror film is one of the most extreme examples of mainstream gross-out horror movies and relies on brutal depictions of bodily functions to terrorize audiences. Dr. Heiter dreams of creating a real-life centipede out of humans and kidnaps a group of subjects that continuously lose more of themselves as each surgical task is undertaken.

Dr. Moreau, 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' (1996)

Dr. Moreau is just one in a long line of mad scientists that enjoy turning people into something that they're not. In 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau , the doctor hunts some unwanted guests on his island in the hopes of transforming humans into animal hybrids.

Dr. Moreau is not only torturing and experimenting on people though, he is actually splicing genes to make animals more human-like. Infamously played by a difficult Marlon Brando , the deranged doctor certainly looks the part as well. Dr. Moreau dresses in a large white mumu and wears face paint to help portray how he's lost a part of his mind.

Edward Praetorius, 'From Beyond' (1986)

In From Beyond , obsessive scientist, Dr. Praetorius, successfully discovers a way to access a parallel universe of pleasure. He becomes completely consumed by his scientific work and eventually turns into a grotesque, shape-shifting monster that preys upon the others in his laboratory.

From Beyond is another H.P. Lovecraft adaptation that was directed by Re-Animator's Stuart Gordon . While its depiction of a mad scientist is even more extreme, the film never quite reached cult status like Re-Animator . It is home to the same type of humor, but its added sex scenes make it a little more outrageous.

NEXT: The Best Zombie Movies of All Time

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Themes & Lesson Planning

35 mad scientist party games and activities for kids.

Check out these fun mad scientist party ideas. Get inspiration for science themed games, activities, food, and decorations. Great fun for a club or party! Using the ideas in the following manner is a great way to spark interest in science activities .

Below are ideas for :

Science Games for Kids

• Scientist Themed Prizes and Awards

Science Activities for Kids

How to make a volcano.

• Science Themed Party Decorations
• Mad Scientist Themed Party Snacks

1. Find the eyeballs

• Fill a large pot with cooked spaghetti noodles, and then bury ping pong balls in the noodles.
• See who can find the most balls in a set amount of time.
• For an added twist you can color code the balls and have each color worth a different amount of points.
• After the set amount of times, count up the points earned by each player.

2. Mad scientist soup

• A bowl full of oatmeal
• Halloween type toys (or of your choice)

Instructions

• Find a big bowl and fill with cooked oatmeal.
• Put in the fridge to make it nice and cold.
• Mix in small plastic toys like eyeballs, bats, spiders etc.
• Have player close their eyes and reach in the bowl.
• Each player has to put their hand in and find one prize and then the next person has a go.

( I’ve also done this using lots and lots of Jell-O! )

3. Scientist Anagrams

Mix the letters up in the names of scientists and get the kids to work them out.

4. Science Treasure Hunt 

Send the kids on a treasure hunt . Make the clues slightly cryptic by using mathematical formulas and scientific words which are appropriate for their age.

1.   Example of clues: 40+5-2 is the number of steps forward before your next clue. 2.   Your next clue is where you might find H2O in the yard. 3.   What did Alexandra Graham Bell invent?

5. What am I?

Get participants minds spinning with this scientific version of a classic party game .

• Index cards
• Write science words on the index cards such as: atom, constellation, electricity, magnet, microscope, or test tube.
• Tape a different word to each guest’s back without letting him or her read it.
• Everyone then tries to discover their identities by walking around asking fellow scientists questions that can be answered with a yes or a no. Example: “Do you need a microscope to see me?” or “Do I move around?”
• The first person who says the word on his or her back wins the game but encourage the group to keep playing until everyone has guessed correctly.

6. Magnifying Objects Game

• Before the event ,  take close-up photographers of 10 to 15 everyday objects.
• Print the pictures and put them on a colored construction paper.
• Next draw a magnifying glass around each picture, so that these pictures look as if they are being viewed through a magnifier.
• Instruct youth to examine the pictures and try to guess which picture represents which everyday item.
• Since these items have been enlarged it will be a challenge to guess what the actual picture product is. The child who guesses the most items correctly wins the game.

7. Burst the Atoms Games

• Blow up two balloons (atoms) for each guest and tie one to each of their ankles .
• Let the mayhem begin as the mad scientist race around the room trying to burst each others atoms but at the same time trying to preserve their own.
• The scientist who manages to preserve the last atom is the winner.

8. Inventing a Rocket Balloon 

This is an easy science game that will teach young scientists about Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion – “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

• For this game you will need long, torpedo-shaped balloons, a drinking straw, string, and tape.
• For each rocket, securely tape one end of a long string to the ceiling. Thread a drinking straw onto the string, then stretch the string taut and tape the other end to the floor.
• Have each child inflate a long, torpedo-shaped balloon and keep the neck pinched shut while you tape it to the straw.
• While everyone holds their balloons near the floor, count down to takeoff and see whose balloon goes fastest and highest.

9. Magical Magnetic Touch

A fun game to show the children the effect of a magnet on other objects. You need a variety of magnets and metal and non-metal products. The trick of the game is to have children guess which product will stick to the magnet once brought close to it and which will not. The participant with the most correct guesses is the winner.

10. Make a light bulb piñata

• All-purpose flour
• Large, round balloon
• Newspaper strips
• Long string Craft knife
• Yellow paper
• Wrapped candy
• Aluminum foil
• Black electrical tape
• Black marker
• In a saucepan, bring 2 cups of water to a boil. In a bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour and 2 cups of cold water, then add the mixture to the boiling water. Once the solution comes back to a boil, remove the pan from the heat and stir in 3 tablespoons of sugar. When the paste cools, it will thicken and be ready to use (cover and refrigerate the paste between applications).  Or…use one of the paste suggestions in the  Goop Category , or  Pinatas and Paper Mache .  (I prefer to use liquid starch.)
• Shape the piñata by inflating a large, round balloon (about 14 inches in diameter). Tear 3 or 4 double newspaper sheets into 2-inch-wide strips. Apply the first layer of papier-mâché by individually dragging newspaper strips through the paste, wiping off the excess with your fingers, and pressing them onto the balloon so that they overlap slightly. Cover the whole balloon except for a 2-inch square opening at the knotted end. Let it dry for 24 hours. Pop the balloon.
• Tape the midpoint of a long string to the top of the bulb, then wrap the string ends around the bulb sides, taping them in place. Let the trailing ends dangle. With a craft knife (adults only), cut an asterisk-shaped opening in the bottom of a 32-ounce plastic deli container. Fit the top of the container snugly against the bulb bottom and tape it in place. The string ends should remain outside the container.
• Add a second and a third layer of paper-mache allowing the paper to dry in between. Cover the sides of the plastic container too, but not the container bottom nor the dangling string ends. Finally, use a glue stick to attach a layer of 5-inch yellow-paper squares to the bulb but not the container.
• Fill the pinata (through the container bottom) with 4 pounds of wrapped candy. Glue aluminum foil to the container to simulate the neck of a lightbulb. Secure the foil with 3 strips of black electrical tape. Hang the piñata upside down and when ready, play the piñata game .

Science Themed Prizes and Awards

( Visit Oriental Trading or one of the other Novelty Companies ) some choices could be:

• Magnifying glasses
• Light up objects and glow in the dark objects light up/glow bracelets and neck rings
• Glow in the Dark Stars
• Colored hair gel
• Gel pens, notepads
• Silly putty and pots of goop
• Also present a science award to recognize children’s achievements.

11. Toothpick towers

• Prepare large Ziploc bags with kid’s names written on them.
• Put small Ziploc bags inside the large ones.
• Fill one small bag with about 100 toothpicks, another one with Tootsie Rolls, another one with Cheese Puffs, and the last one with Gummy Bears.
• The kids’ task is to build the tallest, most stable structure, using the materials provided.

Extension idea: Make a Molecule Center. You can have the kids make structures that resemble molecule shapes using the above same materials. For a more simple version, you can also ‘make molecules’ using toothpicks or spaghetti and mini-marshmallows or gumdrops.

*Remember, cooking and connections  are all science too!  Anything that starts out liquid and turns to a solid is science .

12. Static electricity

Give each mad scientist a balloon and an empty soda can. Have them blow up their balloons and rub them on their heads. Put soda can on a flat surface, and applying the balloon, see if the can moves. Next, get the kids to stick their balloons to the wall. ( Of course-you”ll have a ‘hair-raising’ good time!)

Idea: Write  ‘tiny’ messages . Put a magnifying glass or a microscope on the table so the kids can read them.

Note:  K-A made version #1 with grandsons ‘N’ and ‘B’. Although the boys thought the experiment very cool, we would make the ‘mountain’ itself differently next time. The ‘dough’ material didn’t want to easily stay on the bottle. After adding more salt, water and oil we were able to make a mountain of sorts. Repeating this activity, we would use different playdough or modeling clay.

To the delight of the boys (ages 8 and 12), the volcano erupted for quite awhile. K-A has also successfully made volcanoes with the other methods.

Additional Note : ‘N’ thought it would also be cool to add ‘adventure-seeking climbers’ to the mountain. Hence, the dark blobs, aka gummy bears, on the face and bottom of the hill .

13. How to Make a Vinegar Volcano 

This is a classic science experiment and an easy one. To make the volcano, mix 6 cups flour, 2 cups salt, 4 tablespoons cooking oil, and 2 cups of water. The mixture should be smooth and firm.

Stand a large soda bottle in a baking pan or shallow dish, and begin to shape the dough around it. Don’t cover the hole and don’t drop any of the dough into it.

Fill the bottle about three-quarters full with warm water and a few drops of red food coloring. Add 6 drops of liquid detergent to the bottle, and 2 tablespoons of baking soda.

Slowly pour vinegar into the bottle and step back.

14. Volcano #2

• Fill a child’s swim pool or sandpit with lots of slightly moist sand.
• Get the kids to each make a volcano sand mound with a hole in the center
• Place a small disposable cup in the hole; put in 1 tablespoon of baking soda plus 2 tablespoons of water in order to make it dissolve.
• Add 2 tablespoons of vinegar to which you have added a few drops of red food coloring, then watch it erupt. You can repeat the activity over and over again.

15. Volcano #3 

• 1/4 Cup of Vinegar
• Red Food Coloring
• Liquid Dishwashing Soap
• 1 Tablespoon Baking Soda
• Modeling Clay (Plasticine)
• Newspaper or Vinyl Table Cover

Instructions:

• Clear a work surface and cover it with newspaper or a vinyl table cover.
• Model a volcano out of modeling clay. You could use red clay around the top of the volcano to make it look like red-hot lava.
• Make a hole at the top of the volcano.
• Stir in 1 tablespoon of baking soda
• Add a few drops of red food coloring
• Add a few drops of liquid dishwashing detergent.
• Get ready! Pour in ¼ cup of vinegar and stand back.
• The eruption is acid meeting another substance called an alkali.

16. Volcano #4

• Before the eruption event, form a piece of modeling clay about the size of a baseball into a mountain shape.
• Put the shape on waxed paper.
• Using your fingers, pinch the sides of the clay to form lumps that look like lava coming down the sides of the volcano.
• Poke a hole in the middle of the volcano. Let the clay dry overnight.
• Paint the volcano with brown paint. Let the paint dry thoroughly.
• To make your volcano active: Put 1 tsp of baking soda in the center of the volcano. Then add 1 tbsp of vinegar to make it erupt. Watch out.

17. Rocket launch 

(See a more detailed  Rocket design  in  ‘Popular Activities in Science Category’ )

Fill a small plastic film canister (Fuji works well) with one teaspoon of water. Quickly add one Alka-Seltzer tablet, put the lid on and place the canister on the floor with the lid side down. Wait about 10 seconds and whoosh! Your rocket should fly into the air.

18. Giant bubbles

Make mega bubbles using this fabulous bubble recipe. The secret ingredient for big, strong bubbles is glycerin.

Ingredients:

• Dishwashing liquid – 1 part (many people recommend Joy or Dawn dish detergent)
• Soft tap water/ Distilled Water – 15 parts
• Glycerin – 1/4 part (available from drug stores)
• Mix all together and leave for a couple of hours.
• The longer you leave it the better the bubbles.
• Make bubble wands out of coat hangers or wire and you will have happy kids for hours.

Make  Goop, Gak, and Slime~ Kids never tire of making it .  Click here  for  Science recipes.

19. Science Themed Party Decorations

Make one  party room/area into the lab. It will be much easier to decorate and will contain the mess.

• On the entrance to the room put up some danger tape and a notice warning that only scientists may enter the “Secret Science Lab Zone”.
• Using black construction paper cut out large question marks, magnifying glasses, and mathematical formulas. Put these up around the room.
• Put up posters of famous scientists around the room with a small caption underneath of why they are famous.You could also hang some science clip art pictures in the room.
• Decorate the space with an array of lab items such as gummy frogs that have been pinned down so that they look as if they were being dissected. You can also keep jars of lab specimens like huge gummy snakes, lizards etc.
• Check out Halloween stores/sites/for slimy table decorations which are perfect for scientists; also skeletons and other gory accessories.
• A dry ice machine would make a great table centerpiece.
• Fill lots of different shaped jars with colored water and rubber body parts to put around the table. If you’re going for a ‘Frankenstein Lab’ purchase cobwebs/spider webs and spread them about tables, etc.
•  Borrow microscopes, chemistry sets, molecule models, magnifying glasses, compasses, and so on, and place them on the table and about the room.
• Use a colored globe light to give the room an eerie appearance or just place colored light bulbs in regular lamps. Do you have a flickering plasma lamp? Kids of all ages love them!
• Set up a large chalkboard/whiteboard and write the recipes for the experiments that you are going to do.
• Hang a sign from the table saying “Welcome to the Science Laboratory”.
• Use a ‘weird or scary font’ to write signs such as “Electricity”, “Gas”, “Chemicals”, and put them around the area.
• Put a rubber band around several large test tubes. Tie a ribbon over the rubber band. Arrange tubes to stand with open ends up. Fill them with colored water and add a flower or two.

Note:  Food itself is also part of decorating make it creepy, slimy and gross! See some ideas towards this page bottom and also in the  Halloween Snack Category .

20. Decorate with dry ice and a plasma lamp

For truly dramatic effects, create fog using dry ice. Add one piece of dry ice to every gallon of very hot water. Make foggy smoking cauldrons.   Note: Be careful and make sure that it is in a place where children cannot hurt themselves.

Whether you call them nebula spheres, plasma lamps, or lightening balls, these lamps put on one of the most unique displays available. Twenty years ago they cost $1500. Today you can get one for $40.00 or less. Technically, they’re a clear glass orb, filled with a mixture of various gases at low pressure, and driven by the high-frequency alternating current at high voltage. Great for decorating a ‘Mad Science Lab’

21. Make lab coats 

#1 Professor X Lab Coats: Cover the table with newspapers or freezer paper. Layout fabric markers. Give each child a plain white shirt to decorate as a lab coat. You can use T-shirts, or look for  used front-buttoning shi r ts  at thrift shops

Idea #2 Use white kitchen-sized garbage bags to make lab coats (A practical way to protect children’s clothing during experiments) Cut a half-circle hole for the head, and half-circles for the arms. With a black permanent marker, draw a line down the front and buttons next to it. You can also draw a pocket on the side with a pen in it; write the children’s names on them (Example: Professor Smith, Dr. Susan.

22. Just like Einstein

Purchase black party glasses with the noses and mustaches from a novelty or party store. Before kids enter the “science lab” have them don their coats and glasses. It would be great if staff could be wearing white lab coats, crazy wigs, goggles, or glasses too! Be sure to take photographs of this. Kids may not leave these on long but it will be great fun.

Mad Scientist Themed Party Snacks and Food

23. Make green slime punch 

• 1/2 gallon limeade
• 1 liter ginger ale
• 1/2 gallon lime sherbet
• Mix together juice and ginger ale.
• Scoop sherbet and add to punch.
• Add marshmallows and maraschino cherries to float in punch.

24. Eyeball punch

• Canned litchis, drained
• Maraschino cherries without stems
• Dark red punch or fruit drink, chilled
• Cut a slit in each litchi. Stuff a maraschino cherry into each fruit so it resembles an eye. Place stuffed litchis on a large baking pan. Freeze until solid.
• To serve, pour punch into a large bowl.
• Add the litchis or

25. ‘Eyes of newt’ for punch

• Fill small muffin tins with apple juice and freeze slightly.
• Place a red grape in the center of each tin and freeze until solid.
• Float the “eye” in fruit punch.

26. Glow punch (Using a glow stick)

• 1 quart pineapple juice
• 1 quart Mountain Dew soft drink
• 5 scoops of lemon or lime sherbet
• 1 clean (washed/dried) glow-stick
• Chill all ingredients.
• Gently stir together the soda/soft drink and pineapple juice.
• Add the glow-stick and sherbet just before serving.

27. Wormy ice-cubes 

• 1 cup gummy worms or other creepy crawler candy
• 2 ice cube trays
• 1-quart fruit punch
• Arrange gummy worms in ice cube trays, 1 worm per cube.
• Fill tray with fruit punch as you normally would water.
• Freeze until solid, 8 hours or overnight.
• Place into punch bowl/drinks minutes before serving.

28. Mad scientist gorp 

• 3 c. eyes of Newts (peanuts)
• 2 c. tails of dogs (pretzel sticks)
• 1 c. squishy, slithery parts of frogs (raisins)
• 2 c. warts of toads (Cheerios)
• 1/2 c. lizard lips (walnuts)
• 1 c. dinosaur toenail chips (banana chips)
• 1 c. teeth of bats (sunflower seeds)
• 1/2 c. of dandruff from the biggest rats (coconut)
• 1 c. chocolate cover iguana hearts (chocolate chips)
• Measure and combine all of the ingredients in the order listed above.
• Mix well with mixing spoon. Of course, be sure to post the recipe for all to see!

29. Magnifying glass cake

• Make the cake in the shape of a magnifying glass by making one round and one oblong cake. You can also make a square cake and cut it in 3rds using 2/3rds for the handle. (See photo)
• Attach them together and cover with brown or any color) icing/frosting. Put a circular white area in the middle. The pictured cake has added a fingerprint piped in black icing.

29. Pond sludge (Green Jell-O)

• Fill clear plastic glasses with green Jello.
• When the Jello has almost set, add gummy worms, making sure a few of them are escaping over the rim of the glass.
• If desired, when the Jello has set, add a dollop of pond mud (chocolate pudding).

30. Slime JELL-O 

• Lime Gelatin
• Gummy Worm Candy
• Large clear glass bowl or baking dish
• Make Jell-O following package directions.
• Pour into a baking dish or bowl.
• Once the gelatin has begun to set (about 1.5 hours) add gummy worms.

31. Jell-o jiggler eyeballs

• Ice Cube Trays
• White Grape Gelatin
• Blueberries or Dark Grapes
• Follow the directions to make jigglers from the gelatin.
• Fill ice-cube tray containers 3/4 full.
• Once they begin to set, add blueberries or grapes.
• Following package directions, use warm water to remove the jigglers from the tray.
• Place in a clear serving bowl or on a serving dish.

32. Scientific celery snack

• Cut celery stalks and set them in glasses of water tinted with food coloring.
• Let the celery stalks soak up the colored water. The longer they soak the deeper the color.
• Then remove them from the glasses, and serve to the kids with cream cheese or peanut butter.

33. Compass cake 

• Bake two round cakes.
• Cover one with frosting, top with second cake, and frost the entire cake with white frosting.
• Using a frosting tube, draw a compass face onto the cake, marking north, south, east, and west.

34. Popcorn volcano eruption 

• Spread out a large clean sheet on the floor and have the kids sit outside the edge.
• Set a popcorn maker in the center, and prepare popcorn according to directions. Do NOT put the lid on the popcorn maker!
• Watch the “volcano” erupt and shoot “hot lava” all over the sheet.
• Make sure that everyone stays away from the popper while it’s on, so the kids don’t get sprayed with hot oil or kernels.

35. Make a volcano cake

• Bake two 8″ round cakes and two Pyrex-bowl dome cakes.
• Trim and stack the cakes to look like a mountain.
• Frost it brown and sprinkle it with crushed chocolate graham crackers.
• Use Fruit Roll-Ups: blue for the water around the volcano, red roll-up down the side for lava, green and yellow for the trees and foliage.
• Put several sparkles around the top.
• Cut out a hole from top down inside the cake.
• Put a tall glass in the hole filled with dry ice.
• Add some hot water inside the glass (on top of dry ice) Watch the kids with all the oohs and ahhs when you do this.

Idea: Make mad science monsters. Cut a tray of rice krispie treats into rectangle s. Have children decorate their treats to resemble scientists or monsters using green frosting, colored candies, licorice, and sprinkles!

Other snacks :

Serve food in glass bowls and give them names such as:

• ‘Electronic Chips’, ‘Bubble brew’, ‘Magnetic Munchers’.
• Serve different colored drinks in clear cups and use whirly straws.
• Make Sugar cookies shaped like stars
• Put Gummy worms crawling out of brownies
• Get some “crazy scientist hair”. (Cotton Candy)
• Place small signs with the name of the snack adjacent to each food.

Molecule fruit bowl  Make melon balls from honey-dew, cantaloupe, and watermelon. Make them look like atoms.

A father to three young boys with a passion of homeschooling. I am always seeking new ways to help them learn, grow, and have fun. I have a passion for traveling with the family and exposing our kids to new experiences and life lessons.

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• Wynwood Marketplace, Wynwood
• Oct 25 Nov 1, 2024

Frankenstein’s Mad Scientist Cocktail Lab

Time Out says

Ever been to one of those Christmas-themed bar pop-ups where it looks like Santa's Workshop exploded all over the walls and the drinks are sparkly enough to hang on your tree? Frankenstein's Mad Scientist Cocktail Lab is like that, except much more spooky. Popping up inside The Deck at Wynwood Marketplace from October 23 to November 3, this Halloween-time bar experience serves up mysterious potions, shimmering elixirs and spine-tingling concoctions in a smoky space filled with spider webs and other creepy decor. Besides the cocktails, guests can partake in mad science experiments, tarot card readings and spooky photo ops. A 90-minute $17 reservation includes one cocktail with additional drinks available for purchase.

Dates and times

Fri, Oct 25, 2024 Wynwood Marketplace 6:00 PM

Sat, Oct 26, 2024 Wynwood Marketplace 6:00 PM

Sun, Oct 27, 2024 Wynwood Marketplace 6:00 PM

Fri, Nov 1, 2024 Wynwood Marketplace 6:00 PM

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