ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR

The 'absent-minded professor' is a stock character of popular fiction usually portrayed as an academic with important information, but whose focus on their learning leads them to ignore their surroundings.
The type is very old; Ovid, in his ''Metamorphoses'', describes Daedalus as making the Labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it.^[1]
An example of an absent-minded professor is Professor Calculus from ''The Adventures of Tintin'', or "Doc" Emmett Brown from ''Back to the Future''. The earliest example of this character type is possibly the story associated with the philosopher Thales, who allegedly walked at night with his eyes focused on the heavens, and as a result, fell down a well. Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, and Albert Einstein were all considered absent-minded professors. Andre-Marie Ampere 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, 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.
Another usage of the phrase "absent-minded professor" is common in the English language. Like the phrase itself implies, it is used to describe someone who is 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 "absent-minded professor" archetype is often mixed with that of the "mad scientist", often to comic effect as in the Jerry Lewis film ''The Nutty Professor''. However, while the mad scientist archetype often has malevolent connotations, the absent minded professor is typically characterized as being odd but rather likeable.
The archetype is generally associated with, but not restricted to college professors; in the fantasy genre, he may appear as a wizard.

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References

1. Penelope Reed Doob, ''The Idea of the Labyrinth: from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages'', p 36, ISBN 0-8014-8000-0

See also

★ Memory

★ Asperger's Syndrome