The Mad-Genius Effect: How 9 Legendary Minds Rate On The Sanity Scale
Posted: 02/09/2015
Browse any history book worth its salt, and you’ll find that the brightest minds usually come with at least a touch of darkness. As it happens, society has always been simultaneously enthralled and appalled by the fabled brains and (mis)deeds of these legendary humans. We can’t help but wonder: Are they inspired or deranged? Brazen or withdrawn?
We partnered with Amazon’s new series “Hand of God” to plot out where nine of history’s most fascinating figures fall on the scale, highlighting their incredible accomplishments, inventions and works of art. However, there’s a flip side: click further to reveal the more bizarre, violent, disturbing and downright nuts behavior that are also part of the narrative of civilization’s most notable eccentrics.
The Mad-Genius Matrix: How 9 Legendary Minds Rate On The Sanity Scale
Inspired
Tap to see flipside
Nellie Bly
A pioneer woman in journalism, Nellie Bly (the pen name for American writer Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman) is most famous for faking insanity to gain access to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on New York’s Blackwell Island in 1887. Her deception prompted public outcry and a grand jury investigation following the publication of her story “Ten Days in a Madhouse.”
Nellie Bly
It takes a special kind of person to fake insanity and willingly enter an asylum (on an island, no less) in 1887, a time when care for the mentally ill was notoriously bad. Bly called it “a human rat trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.” That’s the thing about being admitted to an asylum: Once you’re there, you’re family.
Inside, Bly witnessed orderlies choke, hit and tie up patients, human waste in eating areas, and other appalling sights and behavior. To choose to enter into such a place, where extraction is uncertain is, well, a little crazy.
Bly’s personal life was equally unorthodox. After her article made her a bona fide celebrity, Bly traveled the world in 72 days (a record at the time) for the New York City newspaper Cosmopolitan accompanied by a pet monkey she bought on her journey.
Orson Welles
A groundbreaking actor, director and producer who worked in theater, radio and film, Orson Welles is considered by many to be one of the all-time greatest auteurs. His 1938 radio broadcast, “War of the Worlds,” caused a sensation; listeners actually believed that a Martian invasion was occurring. His films “Citizen Kane” (1941) and “The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942) are celebrated as two of the best movies ever made.
Orson Welles
Orson Welles hated his nose, but not for the typical reasons; he wanted that sucker to be much larger. He did everything possible to hide it from audiences, donning an arsenal of prosthetic noses each of which he named. He was quoted as saying, “My nose is nothing,” and pouted that it had not “grown one inch since infancy.”
He was also notoriously difficult to work with, consistently showing up late or missing events. Eventually he had to support himself financially with commercial work. For some viral gold, look no further than his nowinfamous “Frozen Peas”commercial recording, in which he breaks down while taking direction for a voiceover. Welles to audio engineer: “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
It gets better. He was also an amateur magician, cheering on troops in World War II by performing magic shows. He once sawed actress Marlene Dietrich in half. He then took the show back home, sawing then wife and actress Rita Hayworth in half for audiences stateside.
Isaac Newton
You know this guy. Sir Isaac Newton, one of the most important physicists and mathematicians in history, famously “discovered” gravity and invented calculus you know, NBD. His landmark book, "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", was first published in 1687 and set the groundwork for classical mechanics.
Isaac Newton
If great minds usually come with a dash of the crazy, Newton’s came with a pour. One great first example: Newton thought that color is infused by pressure on the eye. To prove this, he went to town on his eye with a needle, sticking it in until it poked the back. During the experiment he noted seeing white, dark and colored circles as he poked around. Luckily (and shockingly), he didn’t incur any lasting damage.
Newton also suffered from two major mental breakdowns, with the second coming after he retired from scientific research. Some have speculated he may have had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, perhaps attributable to all the mercury he was ingesting; Newton was a devoted alchemist, and a posthumus study of his hair showed 25 times the “normal” level of this poisonous element, which can lead to insomnia, paranoia, delusions and more.
Sir Isaac also reportedly died a virgin, and predicted the world would end no later than 2060.
Brazen
Withdrawn
Vladimir Putin
No one can say that this mercurial figure doesn’t give it the old college try when it comes to accomplishing goals. The Russian president has been in office since 2000, and it’s widely assumed he’ll run in (and win) the election in 2018, extending his time in office to 2024. Despite his murky (at best) political reputation, Putin is not exactly an unpopular guy on his home turf: He won 64.7 percent of the vote in 2012, and under his watch the GDP per capita grew from $2,400 in 2000 to $12,000 in 2014.
Vladimir Putin
Putin is known for bringing his large, potentially unfriendly dogs to political talks, famously freaking out German chancellor and noted cynophobic Angela Merkel.
Putin doesn’t suffer critics, either, as was the case with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was formerly the richest man in Russia. The oil tycoon was exiled to an “undisclosed location” in 2011 - this after being wrongly imprisoned on tax fraud charges in 2003.
According to a 2011 study by Transparency International, Russia ranks number 143 out of 182 countries in corruption. The $1 billion estate Putin has been building on the Black Sea, which is widely believed to be financed through corruption, is a testament to the ranking.
José Delgado
Best known for his work on mind control, José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado pushed boundaries as he used electrical stimulation to control the minds of animals, eventually stopping a bull from charging at him with the push of a button. Born in Spain in 1915, Delgado was a physiology professor at Yale for years, and he also invented an early version of the device that is now used as a cardiac pacemaker.
José Delgado
Delgado performed his experiments on monkeys and cats for years, making them yawn, fight, sleep and copulate using remote controls, and was particularly interested in controlling anger. He also tested out his theories on humans, experimenting on patients at a mental hospital in Rhode Island with schizophrenia and epilepsy.
He had some suspect theories on the autonomy of the human mind, saying that,
"Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain."" What’s the worst that could happen, right?
Pythagoras
Described by many as the first pure mathematician, Pythagoras is best known for the eponymous Pythagorean Theorem, which concerns the geometry of right triangles. Remember a² + b² = c²? Don’t worry, you can go back to forgetting it now. Pythagoras also did lots of studies on odd and even numbers, and contributed to our understanding of angles, triangles, areas, proportion, polygons and more.
Pythagoras
Pythagoras long maintained that he distinctly recalled having occupied other human forms before his birth at Samos, Greece, around 570 B.C. In his early fifties, he settled in Crotona, a Greek colony in southern Italy, and founded a philosophical and religious school, where his many followers lived and worked.
The Pythagoreans followed rules of behavior restricting when they spoke, what they wore and what they ate. Some stranger rituals involved only having sex in summer, only eating uncooked foods, and believing that the soul lived in the brain and is immortal, which explains Pythagoras’ claim that his current human form was not his only one.
Theories concerning his death are numerous, and none sound like very much fun. Depending on the source, his demise was at the hands of an angry mob, the result of a war between two warring Greek provinces, or came after a period of self-inflicted starvation.
Princess Olga of Kiev
By changing the process for gathering “tribute” (money, jewels, etc.) payments from the surrounding area tribes to the Russian oligarchy, Princess Olga of Kiev was the first person to enact legal reform in Eastern Europe. This came about after her husband was murdered by a tribe called the Drevlians over a dispute involving its tribute. She also defended the city in the siege of Kiev in 968, and secured the power of the throne for her son.
Princess Olga of Kiev
Talk about a lady who preferred to stay single. After the murder of her husband, Olga killed all the Drevlian council members who were brought to the city hoping to marry her off to their prince, burying them alive. She then asked for even more Drevlians to be sent to her to consider the union. Bizarrely, they complied, only to be burned alive in a bathhouse upon arrival.
Not done yet, among other retaliations, she organized a funeral feast in memory of her husband. Five thousand Drevlians attended, and Princess Olga made sure they got good and drunk. Once they were inebriated, she had her soldiers kill them all. How’s that for revenge? Olga held down the fort until her son came of age to take power, living to the ripe old age of 79.
John Forbes Nash
The subject of the Oscar-winning film “A Beautiful Mind,” John Forbes Nash was an American mathematician who made gamechanging discoveries in game theory, differential geometry and much more. His theories are used in everything from economics to computer science, and he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
John Forbes Nash
Nash was known to suffer from paranoia, believing that men who wore red ties were communists conspiring against him. The Princeton scholar gave an incomprehensible lecture at the American Mathematical Society in 1959 that raised serious concerns over his mental health.
At times he also believed that the New York Times published coded messages from aliens that only he could see, and that he in fact was the biblical figure of Job. He was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and spent periods in various mental hospitals over the next nine years.
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov
Ivanov, a Russian-born biologist, perfected the practical usage of artificial insemination and interspecies hybridization of animals. But you might better know him as the guy who tried to create a human/ape mashup at the behest of Joseph Stalin, who apparently wanted to breed a super race that would enable the Soviet Union to take over the world.
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov
Yes, you read that right. Around 1910 he gave a presentation to the World Congress of Zoologists talking about the possibility of an human/ape hybrid through artificial insemination of a female chimp with human male sperm. This was apparently all well and good with the Soviet government at the time, yet by the 1920s Ivanov had gotten nowhere. Undeterred, in 1929 he organized experiments using ape sperm and human volunteers (form an orderly line, please) but was thwarted by the death of his last orangutan.
The Soviet scientific world proved fickle, and during a shakeup around the same time, Ivanov and many of his contemporaries were arrested. He was sentenced to five years of exile, and eventually died of a stroke in 1932.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/...le_n_7657122.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in
Posted: 02/09/2015
Browse any history book worth its salt, and you’ll find that the brightest minds usually come with at least a touch of darkness. As it happens, society has always been simultaneously enthralled and appalled by the fabled brains and (mis)deeds of these legendary humans. We can’t help but wonder: Are they inspired or deranged? Brazen or withdrawn?
We partnered with Amazon’s new series “Hand of God” to plot out where nine of history’s most fascinating figures fall on the scale, highlighting their incredible accomplishments, inventions and works of art. However, there’s a flip side: click further to reveal the more bizarre, violent, disturbing and downright nuts behavior that are also part of the narrative of civilization’s most notable eccentrics.
The Mad-Genius Matrix: How 9 Legendary Minds Rate On The Sanity Scale
Inspired
Tap to see flipside
A pioneer woman in journalism, Nellie Bly (the pen name for American writer Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman) is most famous for faking insanity to gain access to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on New York’s Blackwell Island in 1887. Her deception prompted public outcry and a grand jury investigation following the publication of her story “Ten Days in a Madhouse.”
Nellie Bly
It takes a special kind of person to fake insanity and willingly enter an asylum (on an island, no less) in 1887, a time when care for the mentally ill was notoriously bad. Bly called it “a human rat trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.” That’s the thing about being admitted to an asylum: Once you’re there, you’re family.
Inside, Bly witnessed orderlies choke, hit and tie up patients, human waste in eating areas, and other appalling sights and behavior. To choose to enter into such a place, where extraction is uncertain is, well, a little crazy.
Bly’s personal life was equally unorthodox. After her article made her a bona fide celebrity, Bly traveled the world in 72 days (a record at the time) for the New York City newspaper Cosmopolitan accompanied by a pet monkey she bought on her journey.
A groundbreaking actor, director and producer who worked in theater, radio and film, Orson Welles is considered by many to be one of the all-time greatest auteurs. His 1938 radio broadcast, “War of the Worlds,” caused a sensation; listeners actually believed that a Martian invasion was occurring. His films “Citizen Kane” (1941) and “The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942) are celebrated as two of the best movies ever made.
Orson Welles
Orson Welles hated his nose, but not for the typical reasons; he wanted that sucker to be much larger. He did everything possible to hide it from audiences, donning an arsenal of prosthetic noses each of which he named. He was quoted as saying, “My nose is nothing,” and pouted that it had not “grown one inch since infancy.”
He was also notoriously difficult to work with, consistently showing up late or missing events. Eventually he had to support himself financially with commercial work. For some viral gold, look no further than his nowinfamous “Frozen Peas”commercial recording, in which he breaks down while taking direction for a voiceover. Welles to audio engineer: “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
It gets better. He was also an amateur magician, cheering on troops in World War II by performing magic shows. He once sawed actress Marlene Dietrich in half. He then took the show back home, sawing then wife and actress Rita Hayworth in half for audiences stateside.
You know this guy. Sir Isaac Newton, one of the most important physicists and mathematicians in history, famously “discovered” gravity and invented calculus you know, NBD. His landmark book, "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", was first published in 1687 and set the groundwork for classical mechanics.
Isaac Newton
If great minds usually come with a dash of the crazy, Newton’s came with a pour. One great first example: Newton thought that color is infused by pressure on the eye. To prove this, he went to town on his eye with a needle, sticking it in until it poked the back. During the experiment he noted seeing white, dark and colored circles as he poked around. Luckily (and shockingly), he didn’t incur any lasting damage.
Newton also suffered from two major mental breakdowns, with the second coming after he retired from scientific research. Some have speculated he may have had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, perhaps attributable to all the mercury he was ingesting; Newton was a devoted alchemist, and a posthumus study of his hair showed 25 times the “normal” level of this poisonous element, which can lead to insomnia, paranoia, delusions and more.
Sir Isaac also reportedly died a virgin, and predicted the world would end no later than 2060.
Brazen
Withdrawn
Vladimir Putin
No one can say that this mercurial figure doesn’t give it the old college try when it comes to accomplishing goals. The Russian president has been in office since 2000, and it’s widely assumed he’ll run in (and win) the election in 2018, extending his time in office to 2024. Despite his murky (at best) political reputation, Putin is not exactly an unpopular guy on his home turf: He won 64.7 percent of the vote in 2012, and under his watch the GDP per capita grew from $2,400 in 2000 to $12,000 in 2014.
Vladimir Putin
Putin is known for bringing his large, potentially unfriendly dogs to political talks, famously freaking out German chancellor and noted cynophobic Angela Merkel.
Putin doesn’t suffer critics, either, as was the case with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was formerly the richest man in Russia. The oil tycoon was exiled to an “undisclosed location” in 2011 - this after being wrongly imprisoned on tax fraud charges in 2003.
According to a 2011 study by Transparency International, Russia ranks number 143 out of 182 countries in corruption. The $1 billion estate Putin has been building on the Black Sea, which is widely believed to be financed through corruption, is a testament to the ranking.
Best known for his work on mind control, José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado pushed boundaries as he used electrical stimulation to control the minds of animals, eventually stopping a bull from charging at him with the push of a button. Born in Spain in 1915, Delgado was a physiology professor at Yale for years, and he also invented an early version of the device that is now used as a cardiac pacemaker.
José Delgado
Delgado performed his experiments on monkeys and cats for years, making them yawn, fight, sleep and copulate using remote controls, and was particularly interested in controlling anger. He also tested out his theories on humans, experimenting on patients at a mental hospital in Rhode Island with schizophrenia and epilepsy.
He had some suspect theories on the autonomy of the human mind, saying that,
"Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain."" What’s the worst that could happen, right?
Described by many as the first pure mathematician, Pythagoras is best known for the eponymous Pythagorean Theorem, which concerns the geometry of right triangles. Remember a² + b² = c²? Don’t worry, you can go back to forgetting it now. Pythagoras also did lots of studies on odd and even numbers, and contributed to our understanding of angles, triangles, areas, proportion, polygons and more.
Pythagoras
Pythagoras long maintained that he distinctly recalled having occupied other human forms before his birth at Samos, Greece, around 570 B.C. In his early fifties, he settled in Crotona, a Greek colony in southern Italy, and founded a philosophical and religious school, where his many followers lived and worked.
The Pythagoreans followed rules of behavior restricting when they spoke, what they wore and what they ate. Some stranger rituals involved only having sex in summer, only eating uncooked foods, and believing that the soul lived in the brain and is immortal, which explains Pythagoras’ claim that his current human form was not his only one.
Theories concerning his death are numerous, and none sound like very much fun. Depending on the source, his demise was at the hands of an angry mob, the result of a war between two warring Greek provinces, or came after a period of self-inflicted starvation.
By changing the process for gathering “tribute” (money, jewels, etc.) payments from the surrounding area tribes to the Russian oligarchy, Princess Olga of Kiev was the first person to enact legal reform in Eastern Europe. This came about after her husband was murdered by a tribe called the Drevlians over a dispute involving its tribute. She also defended the city in the siege of Kiev in 968, and secured the power of the throne for her son.
Princess Olga of Kiev
Talk about a lady who preferred to stay single. After the murder of her husband, Olga killed all the Drevlian council members who were brought to the city hoping to marry her off to their prince, burying them alive. She then asked for even more Drevlians to be sent to her to consider the union. Bizarrely, they complied, only to be burned alive in a bathhouse upon arrival.
Not done yet, among other retaliations, she organized a funeral feast in memory of her husband. Five thousand Drevlians attended, and Princess Olga made sure they got good and drunk. Once they were inebriated, she had her soldiers kill them all. How’s that for revenge? Olga held down the fort until her son came of age to take power, living to the ripe old age of 79.
The subject of the Oscar-winning film “A Beautiful Mind,” John Forbes Nash was an American mathematician who made gamechanging discoveries in game theory, differential geometry and much more. His theories are used in everything from economics to computer science, and he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
John Forbes Nash
Nash was known to suffer from paranoia, believing that men who wore red ties were communists conspiring against him. The Princeton scholar gave an incomprehensible lecture at the American Mathematical Society in 1959 that raised serious concerns over his mental health.
At times he also believed that the New York Times published coded messages from aliens that only he could see, and that he in fact was the biblical figure of Job. He was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and spent periods in various mental hospitals over the next nine years.
Ivanov, a Russian-born biologist, perfected the practical usage of artificial insemination and interspecies hybridization of animals. But you might better know him as the guy who tried to create a human/ape mashup at the behest of Joseph Stalin, who apparently wanted to breed a super race that would enable the Soviet Union to take over the world.
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov
Yes, you read that right. Around 1910 he gave a presentation to the World Congress of Zoologists talking about the possibility of an human/ape hybrid through artificial insemination of a female chimp with human male sperm. This was apparently all well and good with the Soviet government at the time, yet by the 1920s Ivanov had gotten nowhere. Undeterred, in 1929 he organized experiments using ape sperm and human volunteers (form an orderly line, please) but was thwarted by the death of his last orangutan.
The Soviet scientific world proved fickle, and during a shakeup around the same time, Ivanov and many of his contemporaries were arrested. He was sentenced to five years of exile, and eventually died of a stroke in 1932.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/...le_n_7657122.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in
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