Science

The Best Fictional Scientists From TV and Movies

With so many great, funny, scary, sexy and sinister fictional scientists on TV and in the movies, it's hard to pick the best. But we did it anyway. Here is our list of favorites. We like our list, but we know you'll let us know who we forgot and where we went wrong!
  • C. A. Rotwang
  • Walter White
  • Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
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With so many great fictional scientists on TV and in the movies, it's hard to pick the best. But we did it anyway. Read More:
Op-Ed: What Scientists Under Pressure Can Learn From SpockThere is a great argument to be made for Star Trek's Spock, as a real-life scientist eloquently does in an op-ed today for our From the Fields series. But he got us thinking about all the other smart, scary, sexy, silly and sinister scientists we love to watch, so we've compiled a list (in no particular order) of our favorites. As always, we trust you'll let us know where we went wrong and whose absence offended you most. Above:

C. A. Rotwang, Metropolis

The original big-screen mad scientist, Rotwang was the diabolical genius in Fritz Lang's classic 1927 science fiction film Metropolis. Working in an underground lab festooned with Tesla coils, Rotwang creates a C3PO-like fembot in the image of his dead wife. The android goes on to pose as the leader of the city's oppressed working class, and incites a riot that plunges the future-city of Metropolis into darkness and chaos. During a rooftop struggle with the film's protagonist, Rotwang (spoiler warning) falls to his doom in the third act. But elements of his style -- wild shock of hair, insane scheming, black-gloved prosthetic hand -- live on in every pop culture mad scientist from Doc Brown to Dr. Strangelove. --Kevin Poulsen