@petergleick I am a retired Chemist, of course I’m a mad scientist all chemists are med - we work with toxic and explosive chemicals for peanuts, we must be mad.
@petergleick I am proud that my technicians, when I moved to France, called me (behind my back ) Professeur Fou. Now my hair & beard are almost white and a bit wild, I start to look the part as well. (To explain, I did arrange for experiments on various tissues 'harvested' at local abattoirs).
@petergleick A lot of those "mad scientists" in those science fiction stories are technically mad engineers. I'm not sure most pop/pulp science fiction writers understand the difference.