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Absent-minded professor
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The absent-minded professor is a stock character of popular fiction, usually portrayed as a talented academic whose focus on academic matters leads them to ignore or forget their surroundings.
The phrase "absent-minded professor" is also commonly used more generally in English to describe people who are so engrossed in their 'own world' that they fail to keep track of their surroundings. It is a common stereotype that professors get so obsessed with their research that they pay little attention to anything else.
The stereotype is very old: it was said that the philosopher Thales walked at night with his eyes focused on the heavens and, as a result, fell down a well.
lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m2816104",this)' onMouseout='hide("m2816104")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Isaac_Newton">Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, André-Marie Ampère, Hubert Alyea, Sewall Wright, and Albert Einstein were all professors considered to be absent-minded by their contemporaries – their attention absorbed by their academic studies.
lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m2816110",this)' onMouseout='hide("m2816110")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Andr%C3%A9-Marie_Amp%C3%A8re">André-Marie Ampère used a cloth chalkboard eraser as a handkerchief.
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Encyclopedia
The absent-minded professor is a stock character of popular fiction, usually portrayed as a talented academic whose focus on academic matters leads them to ignore or forget their surroundings.
The phrase "absent-minded professor" is also commonly used more generally in English to describe people who are so engrossed in their 'own world' that they fail to keep track of their surroundings. It is a common stereotype that professors get so obsessed with their research that they pay little attention to anything else.
The stereotype is very old: it was said that the philosopher Thales walked at night with his eyes focused on the heavens and, as a result, fell down a well.
Examples of real absent-minded professors
Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, André-Marie Ampère, Hubert Alyea, Sewall Wright, and Albert Einstein were all professors considered to be absent-minded by their contemporaries – their attention absorbed by their academic studies.
André-Marie Ampère
André-Marie Ampère used a cloth chalkboard eraser as a handkerchief. In the streets of Paris, he mistook the side of a horse-drawn delivery van for a blackboard, began some calculation on it, and walked and then ran along beside it to continue his work when it drove off. Between the afternoon and the evening of one day he forgot a dinner invitation personally delivered by the Emperor Napoleon.
Sewall Wright
Geneticist Sewall Wright, known for his copious use of chalkboards, is said to have once accidentally used a guinea pig as an eraser.
Fictitious absent-minded professors
Examples in film of absent-minded professors are Professor Calculus from The Adventures of Tintin, "Doc" Emmett Brown from Back to the Future, and, of course, the title character in the film The Absent-Minded Professor and its less successful film remakes all based on the short story A Situation of Gravity, by Samuel W. Taylor, as well as Professor Farnsworth of Futurama. Professor Kokintz in The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley is an example from literature.
The "absent-minded professor" archetype is sometimes mixed with that of the "mad scientist", often for comic effect as in the Jerry Lewis film The Nutty Professor. However, the mad scientist archetype usually has malevolent connotations, the absent minded professor is typically characterized as benevolent.
The fictional absent-minded professor is often a college professor of science or engineering; in the fantasy genre, a similar charcter may appear as a wizard.
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